The Leelazarus Effect
by soylentOrange
Summary: Leela is fired and forced to take back her old job. In a freak accident she ends up in the future, where she finds New New York in ruins. Now she has to find a way back to the year 3000 and save the day.
1. Part 1

The Leelazarus Effect

by soylentOrange

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Futurama is brought to you by Grork's wholesale probulators. Grork, the number one name in probulators and probulator accessories since 2862.

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Part 1

"Good news everyone!"

It always amazed Leela how these three simple words could drive such a stake of pure unremitting terror through her heart. Over the years she had faced more than her fair share of alien monsters, rampaging killbots, and bloody space battles, but as yet nothing had ever come close to having the effect of that horrific phrase.

The entire PE crew, sans Amy and Zoidberg, were sitting around the conference table waiting for the morning briefing when Farnsworth came shuffling in. Hermes was busy alphabetizing a stack of anonymous forms. He finished his task as Leela watched, and then proceeded to shuffle the stack and start over. A clang followed by a string of barely audible Cantonese curses drifted over from the direction of the Planet Express Ship.

At the sound of Farnsworth's words Fry and Bender threw each other a nervous glance. Leela tried to assure herself that, no matter where the professor was about to send them, it couldn't possibly be worse than Cannibalon, and she'd managed to survive that fiasco relatively unscathed; physically anyway.

"Today you will be delivering a crate of drink parasols to Staruba 6, the Paradise Planet."

"Alright!" Fry gave his robot friend a high-five "Did you hear that Leela?", he asked excitedly, "We're going to The Paradise Planet! We'll live to see another day!"

Leela just sat with her arms crossed. Long experience told her that if it seemed too good to be true, it probably was.

"Of course, ever since the Necrons took over last February, it's more like the Death and Despair planet, but that's not important. Anyway, off you go!"

Fry's paused in mid celebration. "Wait, wha?", he stammered. Farnsworth just shooed him in the direction of the waiting rocket ship. Leela waited for her colleagues to disperse and then stood up. As she reluctantly began to follow Fry and Bender to the ship, a wrinkly old hand descended upon her shoulder.

"Where are you going?", asked Farnsworth.

"Uhh, to the ship?"

"There's no time for that. You have to get going if you want to get there in time."

Leela gave the old man a funny look. "But it's a shipment of little umbrellas. It's not like it really matters when we get them there."

"No you ninny. Not the delivery. The flight exam."

Now it was Leela's turn to stammer confusedly "Wait, Wha?"

"The flight exam you one-eyed dope! I just told you about it five minutes ago! Every space captain has to take a test at the DMV each year to renew his or her license, doy!"

Leela was incredulous. "Now hold on professor. First of all, you weren't even in the same room with me five minutes ago. You were in the lounge talking to a lamp. Get yourself new glasses. Second of all, if space captains are supposed to take a license renewal test every year, why have I never heard of it before?"

Hermes looked up from his stack of forms. "I think I can answer dat", he said. "Planet Express has to pay the DMV a substantial fee every time they administer the test and we can't afford it"

"But then why are you making me do it now?", the cyclops asked, quickly adding: "Not that I mind missing out on the mission." Leela stepped aside as Amy tried get around her. The grease-covered intern headed for the bathroom, ostensibly to clean herself off before the mission.

"Sorry Leela, but da DMV started getting suspicious after I filed a death report for the same person three years in a row, and den hired the same person back at the start of da next fiscal year." Leela gave the Jamaican a questioning look. "It was the only way I could get around da rule," he explained sheepishly.

A low hum filled the room as The Planet Express Ship started to power up. The professor gestured for Leela to get moving. "Now off you go, or you'll be late."

"Wait…" Leela began.

The professor cut her off. "Oh don't worry about how we're going to afford this. We'll just take it out of Zoidberg's salary, like we always do when there's an emergency, or any other time for that matter."

Zoidberg came scuttling into the room just in time to catch this last remark. "Aww…", he groaned as he turned and headed back the way he had come.

The Planet Express captain shook her head. "No, that's not what I was going to ask. Professor, who…"

The ship's low hum became a dull roar. Once again Farnsworth interrupted. "Now now, there's no time for more stalling. Now get going."

"Listen to me! If we're here and Amy's in the bathroom, then who's powering up the ship?"

As if on queue, the Planet Express ship began to levitate off the hangar floor.

Leela was frantic. "Oh no, Fry's piloting the ship! I haven't taught him how to take off yet!"

Farnsworth's eyes grew wide with terror. "Dear God, he'll kill us all!"

The giant green rocket floated to a height of a couple of feet and then stopped. Leela, Farnsworth, and Hermes were suddenly face to face with the fusion fires of the ship's main dark matter engines. The hangar door started to open. The ship stayed steady and level. "Wow," thought Leela, "Fry's doing a pretty good job. He might actually make it out of the building without…"

Fry put the ship in gear, and the vessel rocketed forward. Suddenly the Planet Express building was minus a rear wall.

Zoidberg came rushing in at the noise. Hermes glared at the lobster angrily. "You're payin' for dat too!"

Leela soon found herself at the front door of the NNY Department of motor vehicles, but hesitated before entering. She had no love of poorly run government bureaucracies, this one in particular. The last time she had been here was in the aftermath of the first Omocronian invasion of Earth. Her car had been demolished by one of the aliens' anti-monument lasers. It had taken months of time and reams of paper to get her to the point where she could legally drive the car she bought as a replacement.

The cyclops had spent the whole 15 minute drive from Planet Express inventing ways to avoid the pain and suffering she was sure was ahead, but hadn't come up with any options that didn't involve landing someone in the hospital. With a sigh Leela shifted the bag she was carrying to her other shoulder, and opened the door.

The building consisted of a large open waiting room and a row of two dozen service desks. All but one of them were closed. As always, the waiting room was filled with an assortment of the sleaziest, dirtiest denizens of New New York. A few steps from the front door was a customer service desk A bureaucrat grade 82 lounged behind the counter as though he were taking a nap. Leela walked over to him.

"Excuse me, can you tell me wh…"

The man shoved a small slip of paper into her hand, pointed at an empty seat in the waiting room with a grunt, and closed his eyes. Leela decided he wasn't worthy of an ass kicking and took a seat. A large electronic sign mounted on the wall in front of her read "now serving number: 17". Leela glanced at the piece of paper she had been handed. "Twenty-three. Well that's not too bad. I'll be out of here in no time." Then she moved her thumb and noticed the six that came after the three. "Aww crap."

"Yeah?"

"Umm, I'm here for the pilot exam."

The woman behind the counter threw the cyclops standing before her a disdainful look. "Why do these customers always ask me to DO things?" muttered the woman. "Do you have three forms of ID?"

"How about retinal scan, fingerprint, and colonic map?"

"You can use your retinal scan or colonic map, not both."

Leela's eye narrowed in annoyance, but she didn't argue. "Alright, then use my aural signature."

"Sorry, but that's from the same list as fingerprints."

"Then take a sample of my DNA."

"No."

"Driver's license?"

"No."

"Passport?"

"Cant do it."

At this point Leela was about ready to scream. "The only other ID I brought is my social security card."

The clerk looked at her console. "Uhh, alright. That'll work. Let me see it." Then she paused for a moment. "Wait, no I'm sorry. Today's Tuesday. We can't accept social security cards on tuesd…" But she didn't finish, for suddenly there came the distinct impression that to utter another word would lead to sever bodily harm to herself, her coworkers, and anyone else who happened to have the bad sense to be within a five block radius of the DMV at this particular moment. "Umm, you know what? Never mind. Let me just see that social security card.

"Good idea," remarked the cyclops. The comment was said calmly and without malice, but the clerk still felt a cold shiver crawl up her spine.

"I'm sorry ma'am, but I can't pass you."

"What! But I'm an excellent pilot!"

"Lady, you crashed through three billboards, rear-ended an ambulance, and while we were flying over The Moon you sent a 4th grade class running for their lives. That'll be one recess that they never forget."

"Oh come on, I stayed in my lane. And look, my hands were at ten and two the whole time!"

But the instructor wouldn't hear any of it. Seeing that there was nothing left for her to say, Leela sighed and took the paper from the man's outstretched hand. It read 'revocation of commercial vehicle license'. Evidently they weren't taking her private driver's license too. Thank god. Without saying another word, Leela turned and walked toward the door. The instructor called after her: "Please lady, don't drive home! I've got children out there!"

Leela drove straight back to Planet Express. To her own satisfaction, she didn't hit a single billboard along the way. Truth be told she had increased her following distance just to be safe, but that couldn't have made that much of a difference. After all, she only added another half a car length. Or maybe it was five car lengths. It was always so hard to tell… Once back at work, Leela parked her car and snuck in the front door. With any luck the professor would be asleep and Hermes would be locked away in his cubicle. If she played her cards right, no one would know she was back until Fry and Bender returned from the delivery. "Time now for some much needed down time," Leela said to herself under her breath. The cyclops flopped down on the couch and turned the tv on low volume. Some cooking show was on. Evidently Bender had been watching the tube recently. Leela flipped the channels for awhile and settled on Everybody Loves Hypnotoad, which had regained much of it's luster since it's low point in season three. She had just gotten comfortable, indeed her wrostolojackomator's comftometer was at 89, when Amy walked into the room.

"Oh Hi Leela, I didn't know you were back. I'll go tell the professor." The intern turned and walked over to lean out into the hangar.

"Wait Amy! Don't."

But Amy wasn't paying attention to her. "Professor! Hermes! Leela's Back!"

Leela collapsed into the sofa. "Aww crud." She said it as though it were the most profound statement she had made all morning.

"You wha!"

"I said, I failed the test."

"You what!" Farnsworth tapped at his hearing aid.

Leela rolled her eye. Hermes, who was standing next to the professor with his arms crossed, took the liberty of screaming Leela's words into the old man's ear. "She said she failed da test you deaf geeza!"

Looking slightly offended, the professor backed away from the bureaucrat and crossed his arms. "Now, now Hermes, there's no need for yelling. Use your inside voice. Oh, and how did the driving test go?"

Only through sheer willpower was Leela able to keep from throttling the old man. Not for the first time the cyclops realized how dangerous a place the world would be if she was a little more impulsive. Dangerous for the world that is.

"For the last time, " said the PE captain through clenched teeth. "I took the exam, but the DMV didn't pass me. I mean geez, you hit a billboard or two or mentally scar a bunch of kids for life and suddenly you're a 'hazard to humanity'."

"Oh fuff, they called me the same thing after I unleashed those atomic powered, flesh-eating gerbils on the city last fall. It doesn't mean anything."

"Then you'll still let me be captain?"

The old man waddled over to Leela's side and wrapped a wrinkly arm around the depressed woman's shoulder. "There there," he said, "I'd never fire you over something like this. That's Hermes' job."

Hermes walked up and handed Leela a pink piece of paper. "Your fired," he said.

"… So anyway, that's why I need my old job back."

The early-evening sunlight streamed in through the 64th floor windows of Applied Cryogenics. Leela had to squint to distinguish the figure sitting behind the large mahogany desk from the glare that surrounded him like a halo.

"Oh, Leela, I would most certainly love to give you a job." Ipgee's patent Indian accent made Leela think about smiling. Still, she couldn't help but wonder how out of all of the people she'd come across in her time as starship captain, his had been the only such accent she'd heard.

"But, " continued Ipgee, "I'm afraid I don't have a position for a delivery boy."

Leela sighed. "For the last time sir, that was my friend's career chip. They got mixed up somehow while I was implanting them."

"Ah, the pointy haired idiot that was always saying 'what up?', yes I remember him. He was the best cryogenics councilor we ever had, until he mysteriously vanished."

"He didn't mysteriously vanish, he and his girlfriend froze themselves in one of your tubes; well at least until someone dumped them in a ditch and the tube woke them up again… Hey, wait a minute… Fry was a better cryogenics councilor that I was?"

"Shiva yes, even better than you. He was so good that most of the defrostees he counseled decided to freeze themselves again right away. We've never had so many repeat customers. Now let me see your hand so I can verify that you really have the right chip"

Leela held out her palm while Ipgee scanned it with a small handheld device. The hoverscreen over the man's desk uttered a muffled beep, and the words 'Cryogenics Councilor' flashed into existence in green print.

"Ah yes, very good. How someone in a society that fires people into the sun for not doing the job the government assigned them managed to have so many different careers, I do not know, but as long as that screen says 'cryogenics councilor' it does not matter to me."

Leela relaxed noticeably. "thanks Ipgee. I really appreciate it." That was a bit of an understatement really. If Ipgee had turned her down, her next stop would have been the horrible pizza place down the street; after she illegally swapped career chips again of course.

The full moon was directly overhead when Leela finally made it back to her apartment building. The cyclops had gone from her interview with Ipgee straight to her old office to restore it to the way she liked it. That had been a mistake. Some screwball from the 21st century had thawed out around 9 o'clock, and Leela was forced to deal with him. The people from the stupid ages were the worst They invariably did something to warrant their epoch's less than illustrious title. Some stared slack jawed at Leela's eye; others ran away from the career chip implanter. A few of the geekier ones had even been known to give lectures on how various things from the 31st century defied the laws of physics. Of course, they were too ignorant to know that the real laws of physics hadn't been discovered until 2216.

Leela paused as her room came into view. A familiar red, blue, and pink shape was sitting hunched over against her door.

"Fry?", she asked. The only response was the sound of steady breathing. Leela walked over to her sleeping friend. "Fry, " she called again, but the delivery boy just mumbled something incoherent and started to snore. "Come on Fry, wake up. I need to get into my apartment." Leela bent down and placed a hand on her friend's shoulder. The effect was explosive.

"Bender no! I need that to breathe!", screamed the delivery boy as he bolted to his feet. He stood pressed against the wall with his arms protecting his chest for a long moment before his brain began to process the information that his eyes were sending it.

Finally he relaxed. "Oh Leela, it's you! I was dreaming about that time when Bender stole my lungs. Thanks for waking me up."

"Uhh, don't mention it." Leela stood up. "But Fry, why on Earth were you sleeping in front of my door?"

It took a second for Fry's mind to switch gears. "What? Oh right… Umm, well when I got back from the delivery I was hoping that you'd take me up in the ship for more flying lessons, but when I asked the professor where you were he told me that Hermes fired you. I came here right after work to see how you were doing, but I guess I fell asleep. Heh, running from those Necrons must have taken more out of me than I thought."

Leela smiled at her friend. "That was very sweet of you Fry." The cyclops opened the door. "Want to come in for some coffee?", she asked.

The delivery boy's eyes grew wide.

"Don't get any funny ideas Fry. By coffee I mean coffee… nothing else."

"Oh don't worry Leela, " snickered the red head, "there wasn't anything funny about the ideas I was getting."

The cyclops narrowed her eye just long enough to make Fry wonder if she was going to slam the door in his face, and then walked into her apartment. Fry waited until Leela's hands were no longer in range of the doorknob before he followed her inside.

"I really need to furnish this place." It didn't matter how many times she said this to herself, for some reason Leela never actually went through with it. Other than a single armchair, a television, and a digital clock the main room was basically empty. Fry had been at a loss as to where to sit when Leela plopped herself down in the chair. Eventually he'd just settled on leaning against the tv.

"… And that's how Bender and I fought off the entire Necronian death legion with nothing more than a pool cue and one of Bender's empty beer bottles."

"Uh-huh. I'm sure that MacGyver guy you're always talking about would have been proud. Anyway, So who's the new captain?"

Fry's face brightened. Consequently, Leela felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"The professor hasn't decided yet," Fry admitted, "but until we can find someone crazy or desperate enough to want the job, he's letting me fly the ship!"

Leela was incredulous. "No way! He's letting _you_ pilot his ship? After you crashed it through the wall not 24 hours ago!"

"Well Amy can't do it because her classes start up in a couple of weeks, Hermes is too busy handling the paperwork, everybody hates Zoidberg for some reason, and you remember what happened the last time we let Bender drive the ship."

Oh yes, Leela remembered. How could she not? It had taken more than a day of digging with picks and shovels to dislodge the ship from that neutron star. Worst of all, she was still finding bits of degenerate matter on her clothing. No matter what she tried, she just couldn't get rid of the stuff. Of course, it wouldn't be that much of a problem if it weren't for the fact that a tablespoon of the stuff weighed more than four trillion pounds on Earth. No, Bender could not be allowed near the pilot's seat under any circumstances.

"Yeah, I guess you're the best choice for the job," Leela grudgingly agreed "I guess you'll need my old career chip then." The cyclops slipped a hand into her hip pocket and pulled out the tiny slab of silicon, but Fry stopped her before she could rummage through her handbag for the career chip gun.

"No, that's alright Leela. No one who cares knows that I don't have the right chip. You hold on to it for awhile. It might help you remember the good old days when you're job didn't suck and you got to work with all of your friends."

"Uhh, thanks. I think."

"Hey, making you feel better is what I'm for." Fry happened to glance at the clock. "Wow, it's already 2:30. Sorry Leela, but I need to get going. If I don't get home before Bender does, he'll steal all my stuff again."

Leela sighed and stood up. "Yeah, I guess I should probably get some rest too. I have to be at Applied Cryogenics at 7:30 to defrost some guy named Walt Disney."

Fry followed his friend to the door and waited for her to open it. As the door swung open, the Leela turned to look at him. Fry smiled at her.

Leela smiled back. Fry really was so awfully sweet, and he always meant well. She had always known that someday there would be more between them than simple friendship, but now that they didn't work together anymore that might never happen. "Maybe I should say something, " she thought. It would be so easy to just tell him how she felt, it would just take a sentence or two. He was a good person. Leela knew that he wouldn't hurt her like all of those other men had. Why then was it so impossible for her to speak?

While Leela fought through a turmoil of uncertainty, Fry had plenty of time to wish her a good night, wave, and walk calmly away.

"Fry wait!" Leela called after him, but the elevator doors had already closed.

The next morning was warm and bright. The many spindly skyscrapers blocked most of the orange-tinted sunlight, but every once in awhile a stray beam would make its way to the stirring city streets. Leela took a moment to bask in a pool of light that was being reflected and concentrated by a mirrored building across the street. She let the warmth soak through her for a few seconds and continued on her way, whistling contentedly to herself.

In the back of her mind a voice was commenting that she was in a far better mood than any woman who had just been fired had any right to be, but she pushed the rogue thought away before it could have any affect on her. "I'm allowed a few minutes of complete happiness" she assured herself, "after all, I made a big decision last night."

Complete happiness, now there was a state of mind with which Leela had almost no familiarity. Every time she'd come close to it something devastating happened. Over the years Leela had built a veritable mental fortress around herself to keep herself safe during the times that people she let close decided to hurt her. "Like Shawn," she muttered. A young Neptunian who happened to be walking by turned at the sound of the cyclops' voice, but Leela ignored him. The purple creature shrugged and continued on his way.

"This time it will be different, " Leela assured herself, this time silently. "He won't get bored and leave me for another woman at the first opportunity. I've known him for years. He's not that kind of man." For the first time in her life, Leela knew she wasn't just trying to convince herself of it, she knew it with a conviction she had never had about a man before.

"But when to ask him out?" If she waited too long, she'd just end up chickening out. "This Friday then, after work?" Leela thought for a moment. No, she'd been down that road before. If she waited that long she'd end up convincing herself to wait even longer. Eventually she'd just put it off indefinitely. No, if she was going to do this thing it would have to be right now. It was the only way.

A wave of anxiety washed over her as she prepared to activate her wristlojackomator. She swallowed the feeling with some effort and dialed in the phone number from memory.

"Planet Express, this is Amy speaking." The intern's bored face came into view on Leela's tiny screen, framed by the Planet Express conference room. A pang of loss krept up unbidden at the sight of the familiar scene, but Leela forced that feeling away as well. There'd be time to feel sorry for herself later.

"Hi Amy, can I talk to Fry?"

"Oh, hi Leela. Sorry, Fry left on a delivery already."

"Yeah I thought so. Could you do me a favor? Tell him to call me as soon as he gets back."

Leela sighed and idly tapped her fingers on her desk. The last thing she had expected was to get to work and find that there was no work to be done. No one was scheduled for defrosting until the following day, and since it was Leela's first full day back, she didn't have any recent defrostees to counsel. Of course, Ipgee wasn't about to let her go home early on a non-holiday. No, if she wanted to get paid for the day then she would be there for every last excruciating minute of her shift, even if all she did was stare at the clock the whole time. That's exactly what she had been doing for the last 15 minutes.

"If only I could get my mind to stop thinking about this evening…" Leela sighed again and stood up. For a few minutes she wandered about her office, straightening a stack of papers here, rearranging a few objects there, keeping herself occupied with pointless tasks. Eventually Leela ran out of objects to fiddle with, and wandered out of the room. While her mind raced, her legs worked on autopilot. For no particular reason, the distracted woman ended up in the freezer room. She strolled idly from tube to tube, inspecting the contents of each. The first contained an old man in 25nd century garb. The next tube contained a very young girl, probably no older than 14 or 15. What she was doing frozen in a tube at her age, the ex PE captain couldn't even begin to guess. The next several tubes were empty, but the second to last contained a young man, maybe 19 or 20, dressed in the garb of the early 21st century. A vaguely sad expression was frozen on his face. Leela looked at him for a moment and then turned to the last tube, which was not only empty, but open. "Of course", she said. "That's the tube that held the guy from last night."

Finished with her boredom induced inspection, Leela wandered the few steps to the room's sole chair and sat down. Putting her legs up on the nearby desk, Leela leaned back and stretched, letting the chair tilt back on two legs. Unfortunately, her distracted mind failed to balance her weight properly. Leela realized what was going to happen a fraction of a second too late to do anything about it.

The chair's center of mass drifted too far backward, and gravity seized its opportunity. Leela found herself rolling backward and downward. Suddenly she was rolling across the floor. Her momentum carried her head over heels into the open freezer tube. With a snick, the cryogenic chamber's door closed behind her. A dial on the machine began to spin. Leela banged on the glass, trying desperately to escape what was about to happen. The spinning stopped, and a tiny LED screen flashed on. The screen read '1000 years". The frantic woman screamed and thrashed about, but it was no use and she knew it. "No! Let me out! I…" There was a flash.


	2. Part 2

Part 2

The tube door swished open, allowing a fine mist to spill out onto the floor. Leela moaned and stretched. Propping one hand on the side of the chamber, she pulled herself to her feet and shuffled slowly out into the room. Her legs wobbled under her weight, and the world began to spin. Leaning against the tube to support herself, Leela waited groggily until her blood began to flow. Color gradually returned to her body, but her mind still slept.

"Wha… what happened?", she murmered to herself. A voice in her head was trying to tell her something, but it was fuzzy and so far away… Why was there such a sense of urgency? Something bad had just happened, or was it just about to? "Why can't I remember?" There was a memory of falling backward, and then a feeling of intense cold… The memory clicked into place.

"Oh no, I was frozen!" A wave of terror surged through the cyclops. How long had it been? Suddenly the thought of looking out the window filled Leela with an overwhelming sense of dread. The default setting on the freezer tubes was a millennium. "My god, a thousand years…" Her parents, her friends, everyone she knew would be long dead and forgotten. She would be utterly alone, a relic from the long past to be pitied and scorned by the denizens of the far future. She would be a 41st century Fry.

Leela shook her head to clear it. "No, it's not possible." The words came out hollow. Not even realizing that she was holding her breath, Leela forced herself to turn and walk the few steps to the window sill. Somehow her eye had managed to close of its own volition. Reluctantly, Leela pressed her face against the smooth surface and forced open her eye. What she saw made her gasp.

The city of New New York lay in ruins. The once proud skyscrapers lay shattered in the rubble clogged streets. Twisted plasteel skeletons jutted from the wreckage of the buildings that they had supported. Overhead, the sky was a dismal gray.

Leela worked her way through the shattered streets as the reality of her situation sank in. Somehow the whole city had been destroyed. Everywhere she went there was more destruction. Only a few of the smaller buildings remained standing, of which Applied Cryogenics was one. Somehow these structures had gone overlooked by whatever force had leveled the largest city on Earth. Leela's tube, powered by the steady fire of a fusion reactor in the building's basement, had carried her safely through Armageddon and into the distant future.

Nothing stirred anywhere. New New York was completely and utterly dead. "No, not just dead," Leela realized, "empty."

An icy shiver crawled up Leela's spine. In the hours that she had been awake she had yet to see any sign that people had ever lived here. Tens of millions of people had called this city home. Even if they had all died a millennium in the past, there should still be something left, even if it was just bones and dust. What had happened to everyone? "Maybe they escaped", she thought. Somehow she knew that wasn't the case.

It was nearly sundown when Leela crested a pile of broken plascreet and stood looking down at the remains of Planet Express. She had known from the beginning what to expect, but even with the knowledge in her head, the reality of what lay before her was still too much to bear. Leela sank to her knees and let the tears come, no longer willing or able to keep them away.

Planet Express was a decomposing hulk. The top half of the tower was gone, leaving a fire-scorched hole in the building's north side. Bits of metal, brick, and glass lay scattered about the base of the building. Leela knew without a doubt that she would find nothing living inside.

When the tears finally began to dry themselves up, Leela became aware of the darkness that had been deepening around her. The thought of being stuck out in the open in the darkness sent a shiver down her spine, and she forced herself to stand. She began walking toward what was left of the Planet Express building. A few moments later she broke into a jog, and then the jog became a run. As twilight faded, Leela's fragile control over her emotions was overwhelmed and, chased by the imagined ghosts of tens of millions of New New Yorkers, Leela bolted through the gaping hole that had once been the Planet Express Building's front door. Careening through the darkness at breakneck speed it was only a matter of seconds before Leela tripped and fell to the floor. Something hard and blunt hit her square in the forehead, sending her spiraling into unconsciousness, and then sleep.

It was early afternoon when the sense that she was being watched woke Leela from her fevered dreams. A few tense seconds passed in silence while Leela lay still, listening for any sign that she was not alone. There was nothing. Finally the ex PE captain forced herself to relax. There was no one there, and she could not afford to let her imagination run wild like it had the night before. That way led to paranoia and maybe even madness.

From her surroundings it appeared as though her terror-induced sprint through the building had landed her in Hermes' office. The large bruise on her forehead was courteous of one of the bureaucrat's industrial grade staplers, which now lay overturned against the wall.

Leela took a moment to compose herself and then began a tour of her surroundings, being careful to avoid the few places where the structure had become unsound. Other than the rooms adjacent to the mysteriously vanished tower, there were very few such places. All in all, the Planet Express building was a testament to the genius of its creator. Professor Farnsworth may have been a senile old crackpot, but he sure knew how to design something to last.

Everywhere she went she felt an unseen presence, but every time she stopped to listen the only sound was that of the blood coursing through her ears. Still, the feeling did not go away.

When her search finally took her to the hangar bay, Leela was greeted by a sight that she had not expected. Resting on its haunches like some beautiful slumbering bird of prey sat the Planet Express Ship, and it was intact.

Though everything else was ruined, the Planet Express ship looked as though it's hull had been soldered together the day before. Along the entire surface of the ship there was no sign of damage or of rust. It was almost as though the ship had been freshly painted. The feeling that she was not alone once again ate at the back of Leela's mind.

Armed with a makeshift metal club, Leela searched the vessel from stern to bow, but found no one aboard. Still, something was most definitely not right. There was no dust or sign of wear and tear inside the ship. The equipment was clean and well maintained. Tools and other objects were arrayed neatly about the cabin. In fact, the only thing that was missing was the supply of dark matter that was needed to make the ship fly.

When Leela realized that the ship was in working condition after one thousand years but couldn't take her anywhere because someone had forgotten to fill the gas tank, she just about lost control of herself again. Fighting to keep herself out of the well of despair that had claimed her the night before, the distraught woman made her way to the bridge and collapsed into the captain's chair. She sat there, fighting a silent battle with her emotions. She had just gotten herself back under control when some unnamed sense flashed her an urgent warning. There could no longer be any doubt. She was not alone.

Leela forced her body to stay perfectly still and listened for the presence that was creeping up behind her. There was a muffled rustle, so quiet that Leela would not have heard it if she had not been concentrating with every fiber of her being. The presence crept nearer. Leela tightened her grip on the crude metal weapon that lay in her lap, but still she did not turn around. The presence grew nearer. Leela waited. Fractions of a second seemed like hours, and Leela still waited. Something was right behind her. It took every ounce of self control to keep from turning around. There was the touch of breath on the back of Leela's neck. The cyclops whirled around, bringing her club to bear. Her assailant's three eyes bulged out in terror and pain as the club contacted with the side of his head. The blow's momentum sent Nibbler flying across the room.

"Uunngh… Where am I? What happened?"

The fact that her pet, who by all rights should have been dead hundreds of years ago, was not only alive but currently in the process of speaking to her should perhaps have come as more of a shock, but after everything else that had happened in the last 24 hours (or 1000 years depending on your point of view) Leela found herself oddly able to take it all in stride.

"Shh, It's ok Nibbler, you're safe. No, don't try and move. I walloped you pretty hard, try to stay still until we know how bad you're hurt."

The black and white Nibblonian's body grew rigid at the sound of the voice. The sudden muscle exertion caused him to wince in pain, an odd gesture for a species with three eyes. Suddenly the creature remembered to whom he was speaking.

"By mighty Thor's hammer! Leela, can it really be you after all these years?"

"Yes," Leela assured him, "it's really me after all these years. Oh yeah, umm, how many is that exactly?"

Nibbler thought for a moment. "Hmm, 49326 cuddle-its translates into… It would have been exactly 1000 of your Earth years ago as of yesterday afternoon."

So it really had been a millennium. "Nibbler, what happened here?" Leela gestured out the cockpit window at the ruined Planet Express building. "Who did this?" After a moment's pause she added: "Oh, and why can you talk?"

Nibbler's face darkened as painful memories surfaced in his vastly superior mind. "Then you do not know. Very well, then I shall tell you all that I know."

"One thousand years ago today, the brainspawn that survived the destruction of the infosphere staged a surprise attack on this planet. With The Mighty One off-planet and you suddenly missing, my only course of action was to reveal myself to the Earthican military. I was allowed conference with a captain Zapp Brannigan, commander of the defending forces. Unfortunately captain Brannigan was unwilling to listen to any advice that I had to give, and the defending forces were defeated before they could fire a shot.

Sensing that your planet's only hope of survival lay in the hands of The Mighty One, I fought my way past the brainspawn blockade and went in search of Fry. By the time I found him and brought him back to Earth, the brains had already consolidated their position and it was too late. The Mighty One fell defending this very building. When it was over, there was nothing left. The brains removed every trace of biological matter from this planet in retribution for the destruction of the infosphere."

"Wait… I'm sorry. Brainspawn? The Mighty one? This all sounds vaguely familiar but I can't quite place it. Also, why can you talk?"

Nibbler nodded. "Of course, I apologize. This might be helpful to you." Leela was blinded by a brilliant white flash from the Nibblonian's third eye. "There, I've restored your memory."

Leela blinked confusedly "Huh, did everything just taste purple for a moment?"

Nibbler gave her a dismissive wave of the hand. "Yes yes, that's a common side effect. Do not worry about it."

"Umm anyway, now that I suddenly remember that Fry is the sole hope of the universe…" Leela paused when she saw the expression on her pet's face. "Err, I mean was the sole hope of the universe. Sorry."

"It is unimportant."

A silence descended between the two long-lost companions as each became momentarily lost in thought. Presently Leela asked: "Nibbler, if all life on Earth was destroyed a thousand years ago, then why are you still here?"

The Nibblonian sighed heavily. He did not answer for a long time. "It was my solemn duty to protect this world, and you and Fry in particular, from the brainspawn. I failed miserably. Once they had conquered Earth, the brains launched a campaign against the rest of the universe. I led the Nibblonian fleet against the onslaught, but our mighty huggyships we were no match for the brains without the special powers of the Mighty One. One by one the populated worlds fell to the brains until, eventually, only my home planet remained. I, along with half of the Nibblonian high council, managed to escape with my life before the brains broke through the last of our defenses. Each of us fled in a different direction in the hope that at least one of us might avoid detection. I chose to return to Earth. For the last 157 years I've lived in the ruins of this city, spending my time meditating and maintaining this ship so that I will always remember that it was my failure that doomed the universe. "

"Ohh, you are just sooo adorable, I can't stand it.. I…"

Nibbler narrowed his eyes.

Leela's cheeks flushed slightly in embarrassment. "Heh heh, sorry."

"Ahem. As I was saying, I spent the last 157 years hiding out on this planet from the brainspawn. It never occurred to me that by doing so I might ever see you again. When I discovered you lying on the floor last night, I assumed it was some sort of sophisticated mental trap set by the brains. When you showed no signs of leaving and then boarded the ship, I decided that you must be destroyed. It did not occur to me that you were not an imposter until you beat me across the forehead with that primitive weapon. Only 'The Other' has the necessary skill to overcome my cunning in battle. Tell me, how is it that you managed to travel forward in time by 1000 of your years, for I assume that is what occurred?"

"No, I got myself frozen like Fry did. My chair fell backward and, next thing I know, I'm locked in a cryogenic tube until the next millennium. Hey wait a minute, come to think of it, how could you not know that's what happened to me? I mean come on, I mysteriously vanished right after taking a job at a cryogenics company, what else could you think?"

The Nibblonian nodded sagely. "Ahh, so it was as I originally thought. It is strange then that you were not found, as a search party was sent to the cryogenics facility as soon as it became apparent that you were missing."

"I wasn't exactly in an out of the way part of the building. A person would have to have been a moron to miss me, but you said Fry was off planet. Who exactly did you send to look for me?"

"That robot friend of yours, I believe Bender was his name. He assured me that he would search the building from basement to rooftop, and let me know if he found even the tiniest clue as to your whereabouts."

"Uh-huh, and how much did you bribe him with?"

Nibbler cocked his head sideways in puzzlement. "I do not understand. Why would I have paid him a bribe for the rescue of his own friend?"

"Obviously you didn't know Bender very well. He probably didn't even spend 5 minutes looking for me, the metal bastard."

Leela and Nibbler stayed on the bridge of the ancient Planet Express Ship long into the evening while the Nibblonian sadly recounted the last millennium of history to her.

According to Nibbler, the brains had been detected completely by accident. A transport ship that happened to be in the right place at the right time radioed ahead to Earth that a fleet of giant brains was headed its way. Luckily, Nibbler had been monitoring the primitive human newscast when the sighting was announced. The Nibblonian immediately ran to Planet Express and revealed his true nature to Amy, Farnsworth, and Bender, who were the only people other than Leela that he knew well enough to even think about trusting. There had been quite a few looks of incredulity when the little furry creature walked in the front door and started proclaiming the end of the world. Apparently Nibbler's cover as a stupid animal had been more masterful than even he had realized.

Nibbler explained the situation and the impending danger to the two Planet Express employees and their employer. While Bender (supposedly) went searching for the suddenly missing Leela, Amy called her boyfriend Kif. Conveniently enough, Kif was second in command of the DOOP flagship. Within minutes Nibbler was face to face with Captain Zapp Brannigan.

When the brains began their attack a few hours later they were swift and brutal, stupefying anyone that fled and vaporizing the few that were foolish enough to stand against them. The Nimbus and a few other military vessels which had not had the bad luck to be overtaken in the initial surprise attack were scrambled to fight the invaders, contrary to Nibbler's advice that they withdraw and wait until the Mighty One could be found and the Nibblonian fleet could be summoned. The Earthican command decided not to take Nibbler's advice. In the words of one Zapp Brannigan: "Sorry, but the DOOP Navy doesn't need talking gerbils to reinforce it. What do you think we are, incompetent?" The last words broadcast by the DOOP flagship were Kif Kroker's: "Sir, I don't think you should touch that." An instant later, and five minutes before it would have come into range of enemy fire, the DOOP flagship was destroyed. The rest of the DOOP actually managed to get into firing range, but the brains simply encased each ship in a psyonic field and ripped them apart one by one before they could get off a shot.

When it became clear that the battle was swiftly becoming a rout, Nibbler was left with only one option: he must find the Mighty One, and he must do it fast. Fighting literally tooth and nail through the streets of New New York, the Nibblonian commander made his way to his hidden spaceship and took off in search of Fry. Sadly, by the time Fry was located, convinced that the talking three-eyed gerbil standing in front of him was not a hallucination brought on by the 23 cans of Slurm he had just ingested, and subsequently brought back to Earth, the battle was all but over.

Fry landed the ship back at Planet Express in order to pick up the three members of Planet Express who, unlike Hermes and Zoidberg, had not already been aboard ship as part of the now-forgotten delivery. With The Mighty One at the helm, a thoroughly disgruntled Martian intern manning the laser battery, a thoroughly bored bending robot working the torpedoes, and the tactical brilliance of a Nibblonian commander, the Planet Express Ship was able to hold its own against the legions of brainspawn. Still, it was only a matter of time before the brains managed to lock onto the ship with their psyonic beams, and swat the pesty little gnat out of the sky.

If Leela had been piloting the Planet Express ship she might have been able to keep it airborne, but Fry was lucky just to get the ship back to the general vicinity of Planet Express before it plowed nose first into the dirt. With the brainspawn hot on their tails, Bender tucked the professor under one arm and the entire Planet Express crew ran frantically for the relative safety of the Planet Express building. Once there they held out as long as they could, which wasn't long. When the brains' final attack came, only Fry and Nibbler were able to withstand the stupefaction rays. Faced with overwhelming odds, the Nibblonian and the delivery boy were steadily pushed back into the interior of the building. Suddenly, a pack of brainspawn drove their way between the two fighters. Fry and Nibbler were forced in different direction, Fry toward the smelloscope room and Nibbler back toward the hangar. A few minutes later a jaw wrenching concussion tore its way through the building. The smelloscope room vanished in a brilliant fireball, taking Fry and the rest of the Planet Express crew with it.

Leela tried to listen to the rest of the Nibblonian's story, but it was hard to pay attention over the images of her friends' deaths that were coursing through her mind like a never ending slideshow. She had to do something, anything to get these increasingly gruesome pictures out of her head.

Nibbler's words trailed off as he noticed his companion's distress. He cocked his head and gave her a troubled look. "Leela, are you alright?"

"Yeah I… No not really." She stood up. "I'm sorry Nibbler, I need some fresh air." Without another word, Leela turned and fled from the room.

Later that night, when the waning crescent moon was just rising over the broken landscape, Leela sat with her back against what had once been a piece of the Planet Express building's front wall. At her feet was a small smoky fire. Leela stared sadly into the hypnotic dance of the flames. It had been hard work finding material that would burn; firewood doesn't usually last a millennium after all. Still, Leela hadn't been able to bring herself to head back to the ship yet, and the search had burnt up some tension and kept her mind busy. Besides, the heat and the light were comforting amidst the dark and desolation of the city around her. If she stared into the flames long enough the outside world would seem to collapse until nothing existed but the crackle and hiss of the fire. Maybe if she stared long enough she could forget for a moment that her friends and family had been reduced to dust. She tried and tried, but it didn't work.

A sudden gust of wind sent a shower of sparks soaring into the air.

"I cant believe I'll never see them again", she whispered to herself. Then silently: "My parents, Bender, my friends from Applied Cryogenics, Fry, they're all gone." She purposely put Fry's name last in the list but she couldn't quite hide from herself the fact that his name had popped into her mind first. She missed the others of course, but Fry's face was the one that was stuck in her head.

A burning chunk of debris broke apart with a loud 'pop', releasing a pocket of superheated air. The fire collapsed in on itself. More sparks flew out into the night. There was something familiar here…. Something important, but just out of reach…

Presently Leela's mind returned to Fry. "It just isn't fair! After years of not knowing what to do I finally decide to let him know how I feel about him, and now I'll never get the chance." If only she hadn't fallen into that damned freezer tube. "Of course," she thought bitterly, "that wouldn't have happened if Farnsworth hadn't made me take that stupid driving exam to begin with." But no that wasn't fair. The professor wasn't the one who was to blame, it was the brains that Nibbler had been talking about. If it hadn't been for their senseless war, New New York wouldn't be a silent wasteland, Fry, Leela's parents, and the others would still be alive, and Leela wouldn't have been left alone in stasis for a thousand years. Yes, they were the ones at fault here. If only Leela had known about them before, maybe she could have done something about them…

The fire continued its dance as the night grew chill. Leela prodded the blaze with a pole she had found lying nearby. The flames licked higher into the night. Something about the way the fire burned made her hesitate as she tried to get comfortable again. What was this sense of deja vous? Where had she seen this before, and why did she suddenly feel as though it was vital that she find out? Leela concentrated on the feeling, keenly aware that such intuitions had gotten her out of many of the tightest spots she had ever been in. "Alright", she thought, "what's giving me this feeling?" It wasn't the fire itself that was familiar really, it was something else… The heat and the light maybe? Yes that was it. And something else, something that involved Fry…

The fire let out another loud 'pop'.

That pop was important too. It sounded almost like, what? Fireworks? No, that wasn't it. Gunshot? No, it wasn't loud enough. Actually it was more like… "Popcorn!" The word echoed off a hundred broken walls, but Leela didn't even notice she had said anything aloud. She was too busy laughing.

Nibbler was still on the bridge of the ship. He had fallen asleep on the observation sofa while waiting for Leela to return, and now the cyclops had to shake him to get him to wake up again. .The Nibblonian's first impression was that something was wrong and he came to full alertness immediately, but when he realized that Leela was smiling he went from worried to confused.

"Leela, what is going on?"

"I can save them! The fire, the popping noises. It's so obvious, why didn't I think of it before!"

"I do not understand. Please, slow down and tell me, what is it that you have discovered?"

Leela paused and took several deep breaths before continuing. "Sorry, I got a little carried away with excitement. I think I've come up with a way to help Fry and the others."

Nibbler gazed at her intently. From anyone else such a statement would have been ridiculous, but this was The Other speaking, and when The Other spoke it was a good idea to listen. "How?" he asked.

"When it started to get dark I built myself a fire to keep warm and give myself something to do, and while I was staring at it I couldn't help but think that it was somehow familiar. The heat, the light, the sounds. It was just like the time that the professor took us to see that supernova and Fry put metal in the microwave. Something in the supernova combined with the microwave and the metal and the whole ship got sucked back through time."

"Yes, I remember that event well. It is what made it possible for Fry to resist the brainspawn, but I don't see how that has any bearing on our present situation."

"Don't you get it? All we have to do is find a supernova and stick something metal in the microwave and we can go back in time and keep the brains from ever attacking in the first place!"

Nibbler thought for a moment. "I see. You intend to use the microwave to initiate a space-time transfer and travel through time as you did to the mid 20th century. Interesting…"

The Nibblonian thought for a minute. "No, that cannot work. Such a primitive means of time travel is inherently unpredictable. You could miss your target time by a day, a week, or five thousand years."

"And there is no other way?"

Nibbler started to shake his head but stopped in mid motion. "Wait. Perhaps there is. Long ago it was rumored that the brains were developing a means to go back in time and destroy the origins of conscious thought. The brains supposedly managed to get the device to work, but realized that they could never use it. You see, if they were to go back in time and destroy all conscious thought, their past selves would have had no reason to develop a time machine in the first place. Such a conundrum could rip spacetime apart at the seams."

"The grandfather paradox." At Nibbler's questioning look Leela added: "Hey, when you spend your life around a mad scientist you pick up on these things."

"Ah, I see. Anyway, if we can find this fabled device we may be able to go back in time and stop the brains from invading Earth and taking over the universe."

"Uhh Nibbler, maybe I'm just a member of a drastically inferior race, but wouldn't going back in time and stopping the brains alter the past in such a way that we had no reason to go back in time? You just said that a situation like that would rip the universe apart, and I'm pretty much thinking that's a bad thing."

"Yes, that is correct."

"Uhh, that is correct as in going back in time would rip the universe apart, or that is correct as in I'm a member of a drastically infer..."

"Leela, the brains have turned the universe into a barren wasteland devoid of thought or purpose, much like an American public school of the early 21st century. Even if all we accomplish is to destroy this reality, there is nothing left that could be lost. Do you believe that preserving reality is worth the only chance you are likely to ever have at saving everyone you ever cared for?"

Leela grimaced. "Well when you put it that way… Ok, let's do it, and to hell with the time-space continuum!"

"Agreed"

"… and when you balance the equation using the theory of nonlinear quantum dynamics, the wave functions collapse to the nullspace of the echelon matrix so that only the real part of the transformation remains, and after some simple algebra you're left with a solution of 14."

"So when Fry told me that 14 was the answer to the ultimate question, he actually knew what he was talking about?"

"It would seem so."

"Huh. Who woulda thought?"

Leela's attention was drawn to a light that had started to flash on the console before her. The ship's computer informed her that the Planet Express Ship was entering the Eta Orionis system. Leela pressed a few buttons and eased the ship to port. The background hum of the darkmatter engines dropped below the threshold of hearing as the PE captain eased back on the throttle. "We're here," she announced.

Outside the viewscreen were a couple of blue sparks, which quickly swelled into the disks of two young stars. A cloud of planets and asteroids were sprinkled throughout the system wherever they had managed to find a stable orbit. None of the worlds showed any signs of life. Most of the them were desolate balls of ice and liquid hydrocarbons orbiting at the very fringes of the star system. Of those that hadn't been ejected into deep space, the remainder lay so close to their parent stars that they had become trapped; tidal forces dragging on one hemisphere more than the other until one side of the planet remained eternally aimed at its sun. Only one had been lucky enough to form in a place where the ever changing gravitational fields of the binary system did not pluck it from its orbit or leave tidally locked to it's parent star. Sensors showed the remains of an intelligent civilization on this planet, but all life was gone now. The brains had been to this place.

"I'm guessing that's where we're going?" Leela gestured at the tiny grey marble on which her instruments promised she would find the ruins of an entire race.

"No. Once the brains have removed the life from a world they leave it. We will find nothing there but smashed concrete and scarred rock." Nibbler brought up a map of the star system on the ship's viewer. "The time travel device was said to be … here." Nibbler pointed at one of the tidally bound planets orbiting the more distant star.

"The brains most likely placed it on the dayside, where they would have as much free solar energy as they could want. Once we discover the device's precusel location with the ships sensors we will have to land on the planet's surface to use it."

"Alright, just let me change course and… Hey, wait a minute. Wouldn't the extreme temperatures from a sun that never sets be enough to instantly fry us, not to mention the constant bombardment by deadly ultraviolet radiation?"

"Did you bring sunscreen?"

"Well yes, but…"

"You'll be fine."

Leela squinted against the brilliant glare of a sun which, at this particular longitude, happened to stay at just the right height and direction in the sky so as to make it impossible to avoid staring into it. Nibbler was somewhere up ahead beyond the next sand dune, and at the moment Leela was glad to have him out of sight. After all, if she could see him she might be tempted to wring his adorable little neck. A drop of sweat trickled down Leela's forehead. The PE captain wiped at it distractedly with her left arm, but only managed to grind tiny bits of brownish sand into her sunburned face. "Stupid talking gerbil," she grumbled under her breath. "I should never have let him talk me into this. Now I know why Fry keeps complaining that I never park close enough to where he has to deliver the packages."

Nibbler scrambled over the top of the nearest dune and called down to his companion. "Leela, are you unharmed? It is imperative that we locate the device before the brains are alerted to our presence on this planet. We do not have time for standing around and enjoying the scenery."

"Enjoying the scenery! I'll show you enjoying the scenery when I cram it down your cute little throat, you lousy excuse for a stuffed animal!" Murder shone in the depths of Leela's eye. Nibbler squealed and took off the way he had come trailing a plume of fine sand. A now dangerously disgruntled cyclops followed him at a slow but steady pace, mulling over possible recipes for gerbil stew in her head.

Luckily for the sole remaining Nibblonian in existence, his race was not destined for extinction this day; for when Leela crested the rise and looked out onto the desert plain beyond, all thoughts of ass-kicking were forgotten. A boundless waste stretched to the curving horizon. It was truly a breathtaking sight, but Leela didn't even notice it. Her attention was immediately drawn to the metal obelisk that stood a half mile away.

"Can you make it work?"

"I am uncertain. My race intentionally stayed away from matters of time travel, and so never developed the technologies that are required to accomplish it. I assume that there is an interface of some kind that will allow us to properly use the device, but we may have a problem if this is not the case. The inner workings of this device are as much a mystery to me as they are to you."

"So then if this thing is broken…"

"I will be unable to fix it."

"Hmm… Leela ran her hand along the sleek black form of the obelisk. It seemed to be made of solid crystal, definitely nothing like any technology she had come across before. It was a little frightening actually, facing something so incredibly alien. "Is this how Fry felt when he came to the future?", Leela wondered. "Suddenly being faced with a world that was far beyond his understanding…" Thoughts of Fry sent a wave of dark emotions crashing against the cyclops' mental defenses. Gritting her teeth, Leela forced herself to clear her mind. Later she just might have a chance to save her friends, if she could just keep herself together a little while longer.

Nibbler started to chatter unintelligibly from a few dozen feet away. Leela jogged over to her pet, who was digging emphatically into a low mound of sand. The PE captain bent down to help, and the sand was soon cleared away. The mound had been hiding a small stone pedestal. A small button was positioned in an indentation in the top of the pedestal. Leela pressed it cautiously. At first nothing happened, but just when Leela was beginning to walk away she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. A small panel detached itself from the nearby obelisk, revealing a microwave sized compartment and sending a light rain of desert sand drifting to the ground. In the compartment sat a small device, no larger than a standard laser pistol. It was cylindrical in shape with two prongs on one end and a pistol-like handle on the other. A green dial on the device's side was the only clue that it wasn't a weapon at all.

Leela reached out and gently lifted the time travel device out of the obelisk. It was a little heavier than she would have expected, but it showed no clear signs that it was capable of manipulating the very fabric of the universe.

"Huh, somehow I was expecting something… bigger."

Nibbler did not respond, but gestured for Leela to hand him the device. The Nibblonian muttered gibberish to himself for a few moments before twisting the nob. A green shape flashed into existence above the time machine and began to congeal into a series of numeric symbols and Earthican letters. It was the current date. Nibbler handed the device back to his friend.

"This is indeed the time travel device that we were searching for. With it you will be able to go back to the 31st century and warn The Mighty One before the brains start their attack on Earth. Together, the two of you will be able to stop the brainspawn's conquest of the universe."

"Why 'you'? Aren't you coming too?"

"Leela, if it were possible for me to travel through time I would have done it long ago in the hopes of warning you before any of this could happen. You see, when two identical consciousnesses occupy the same time coordinate in spacetime, there is a kind of quantum interference. With a mind as small as yours the effect will result in nothing more serious than a few minor headaches, but for me it is a far more serious problem. If I were to go back to the 31st century, my brainwaves would interfere destructively with those of my past self. We would cancel each other out and cease to exist."

Leela crossed her arms. "That is the biggest load of scientific mumbo-jumbo that I have ever heard, and I have no idea what it meant, but I'm guessing that the answer to my question is 'no', right?"

"That is correct."

"Great. So not only do I have to back in time and change the past without creating a universe-shredding time paradox, but I get to do it alone. No pressure or anything right?" She sighed. "Oh well, it's not like it's the first time I've been given some impossible task, and hopefully it won't be the last. Now let's head back to the ship before I'm cooked enough to serve on a plate."

Nibbler looked at her quizzically. "For what purpose do we need to return to the ship? You don't propose taking it with you do you?"

"Well you don't expect me to flap my arms and fly back home to Earth do you?"

The Nibblonian considered this for a moment. "Oh, yes I see your point. But what of me? If you take the spaceship and fail your mission I will be stranded here in this scorching desert forever."

Leela's mouth twitched upward in the tiniest hint of a smile. "Did you bring sunscreen?" she asked.

"Yes, I suppose so but…"

"You'll be fine." With that she turned and strolled off toward the Planet Express ship. Nibbler scurried after her.

Leela boarded her ship. "Strange," she thought, "I still think of this as my ship even after being fired and then frozen for all this time." She paused for a moment to consider and then headed for the bridge. From the captain's chair Nibbler was just barely visible through the front viewport. He lay half concealed by a dune a safe distance away. Noticing that she was looking at him, Nibbler gave the cyclops a nod. He was ready for her to proceed.

Calming herself with a deep breath, the captain of the Planet Express ship began to turn the time device's dial. When the correct date was hovering in the air in front of her face, Leela pulled the trigger. The machine started to vibrate and glow softly. She noticed that Nibbler was speaking to her. Her ears couldn't possibly hear him through the ship's hull, but the words were in her head just the same:

"When you reach the past you will find that the time device will be without power, but do not worry. It will eventually recharge itself enough so that you can use it again if the need arises. Now I wish you good luck and a safe journey. Trust in yourself and in Fry, and you shall succeed where I failed."

Leela pushed the button for the exterior speaker and started to respond, but found that she was unable to. She could mouth the words, but it was as though the sounds waves refused to travel. There was only a few moments to ponder this little bit of information before things started to happen at an alarming rate. The world outside the ship started to fade as though a dense fog was rolling in over the parched desert. Leela concentrated on Nibbler's dim form. The Nibblonian receded farther and farther into the gloom that was descending from everywhere at once. Strange colors and patters began to swirl in the dim grey void that had swallowed the universe. Reality started to twist and peal away like so many scraps of burning paper. Layer upon layer lifted away until only Leela and the ship remained. The grey fog was replaced by utter blackness. Leela stared out her viewport at utter nothingness, the absence of space and time that exists between universes. All at once something opened up underneath the PE ship, though words like 'under' no longer had any real meaning. Even so, the ship tipped over on it's 'side' and 'rolled' into this new abyss. There was the sensation of acceleration. Leela braced herself as she fell faster and faster through nothing. A light appeared somewhere up ahead. Something was approaching, and it was coming way too fast. "I'm coming Fry", Leela whispered. She shut her eye and held on.


	3. Part 3

Part 3

The impact never came. Leela cautiously opened her eye. Through the front viewport she could see a sea of low sand dunes stretching to the horizon. Her first thought was "Oh crap, all that and it didn't even work", but then she noticed something. The dunes weren't as big as they had been five minutes ago, and Nibbler was nowhere to be seen.

Leela reached down to pick up the time device from her lap where she had left it, but her hand came up empty. Startled, the cyclops jumped out of her seat and began searching frantically. It only took a moment to find it where it had rolled between a bulkhead and a piece of navigation equipment. The PE captain bent over to pick it up. A hologram flickered into existence over the device as soon as Leela touched it. A message blinked in the air: "destination reached. Travel time -1000 years, 4 days" A moment later the message flickered and went out as the last bit of power was drained from the device. Leela had made it; she was in the past.

Feeling optimistic for the first time since she'd fallen into the cryotube a thousand years ago, "no," she corrected herself, "just over a day from now," Leela gently put time gizmo in a safe place and sat back down in the pilot's seat. A quick scan of the HUD showed that the PE ship had come through the rift in time virtually unscathed; another testament to the professor's skills as an inventor. "I'll have to be sure and thank Farnsworth when this is all ov… wait." Leela had caught sight of the radar screen out of the corner of her eye. "Hold on, that can't be right." The whole outer edge of the screen was full of static, as if something was interfering with the signal. "Maybe not everything was as well built as I thought.", she muttered. But wait, was it her imagination or was the inner edge of ring of static a little closer to the ship than it was a second ago? More curious than worried, Leela stood up and walked to the viewport. Holding one hand over her eye to block the intensity of the desert sun, the PE captain stared at the horizon. If she squinted hard enough she could just barely make out a tiny black speck, probably nothing more than a vulture looking for dinner. But then another speck came into view right at the edge of sight. "Eh, just a couple of birds. No big deal… Ok, make that three, four, err, five birds…" her words trailed off as more and more specks came into view. Within a matter of moments there were dozens of them, but Leela wasn't watching anymore.

The engines of the Planet Express Ship awoke with a low grumble. Leela's hands flew over the controls. "Come on damnit, wake up you worthless hunk of metal!" she yelled futilely at her ship. The PE captain glanced furtively out the front viewport. The sky was now full of tiny specks, so many that the radar screen was saturated with them. Whatever these things were, they were coming in fast, and the engines weren't quite warm. It was going to be close.

The lead dot grew in size as it approached until it's lumpy pink shape was unmistakable. A green light blinked on the HUD. "Ok, time to leave!" Leela yanked up on the stick as hard as she could. The PE ship reared back on its haunches, paused for a moment as if to take a breath, and blasted into the sky. The converging tide of brainspawn swept skyward a moment later.

Rays of pale green arced by the Planet Express ship, sometimes missing by just a few meters. Leela gritted her teeth and yanked sideways on the stick, sending everything outside the viewport into a crazy spiral. Somehow the brains were staying with her, though how they were managing it when Nibbler had made it a point to mention that they were completely blind, she had no idea.

"How did they know where to find me?", she wondered. "And how did they get there so fast?" It didn't make any sense. One of the brains strange glowing weapons hit the laser turret, and passed right through. There was no hull breach, but all of the systems in that part of the ship immediately lost power. Leela countered with a series of complicated evasive maneuvers, but the damned brains just matched her move for move. It was time for a new strategy. Leela redirected power from all systems to the engines and sent the ship into a broad turn to port until she could see her target in the distance. The Planet Express Ship hurtled into an asteroid field at breakneck speed. The brains followed.

The cockpit jumped up, down, left, right as Leela sent her craft careening between asteroids. Her eye squinted in concentration; it was all she could do to keep herself from becoming a radioactive crater. The gap between her and the brainspawn slowly increased. Every once in awhile one would make a bad move and find itself smeared evenly over half a square kilometer of barren space rock. One of the brains calculated the risk and decided it was time to end this chase before too many of its fellows got themselves killed. The blob of grey matter accelerated toward and past its quarry until it was stationed a short distance ahead of Leela's bow. Leela's face contorted in an evil grin. She laughed aloud and accelerated. A glimmer of understanding shot through her enemy a split second too late. The Planet Express ship smacked into the brain at thousands of miles an hour. Leela turned on the windshield wipers and veered to starboard, nearly missing a jagged lump of cratered iron.

The brains started pulling back. Maybe they had seen what Leela had done to their friend. Still Leela did not slow her ship. When the brains finally circled the perimeter of the asteroid field Leela intended to be long gone.

The asteroids began to whiz by the ship less and less frequently, until there was only one solitary rock up ahead. As the Planet Express ship drew closer it soon became apparent that it was not really an asteroid, but a small dusty moon that had been ejected long ago by its parent planet. Leela brought her ship in low over the moon and hugged its surface, hoping the giant ice ball would hide her exact course out of the star from any brain that had happened to make it through the asteroids intact. She was not prepared for the squad of brainspawn that had been lying there in wait for her.

Skimming only twenty meters or so off the surface, Leela crested a ridge and suddenly found herself face to face with a dozen brainspawn, including one that was much bigger than the rest. Luckily the very ridge that had kept them hidden from Leela also had kept her hidden from them.

Leela aimed for the center of the mob as a dozen green tendrils enveloped the Planet Express ship. Power failed, systems crashed, and the engines went out with a 'whump'. Leela felt the effects of the brains' fields as they worked within her. It became impossible to think clearly, though in truth there was really nothing she could have done anyway. Psychic force fields were sucking momentum from the ship. Speed dropped off at an alarming rate. The brains just needed a few moments more and it would all be over, a few moments that, unfortunately for them, they were not going to get. Now nothing more than a projectile, the PE ship crashed through the squad of brainspawn, scattering them every which way and taking out two who had been a little two slow to get out of the way.

The stupefaction fields vanished for a moment as the disoriented brains tried to reacquire their target. Leela felt her wits returning. Unfortunately, the power was still gone. All she could do was watch as gravity slowly pulled her ship toward the surface of the moon.

The ship hit at just over two hundred kilometers an hour and skipped like a stone. Leela was thrown around in her restraints like a rag doll. Up ahead in the distance a jagged cliff rose five kilometers in the air. The ship dug long furrows in the regolith as it bounced and skidded over the surface. The wall of rock loomed larger and larger until it filled the whole viewport. Leela groaned as she realized she wasn't going to stop in time. "I am _so_ tired of crashing into things."

The big brain hovered over the crash site for a long time. The scar left by the doomed human's pitiful little spacecraft ended abruptly in a pile of rubble at the base of a cliff. The impact had sent a sizable chunk of the cliff face crashing down so that now only the section of the vessel aft of the laser turret was visible to human eyes. The big brain saw a good deal more.

A few of his underlings approached, having finished tending to the injured. They floated about anxiously, not quite sure if they should disturb their leader's concentration. Finally one of them asked if there were any life signs in the buried ship. As if the answer wasn't obvious. The big brain watched as the offender began to glow in embarrassment under his superior's scrutiny. That one must learn discipline if he is to survive against the Nibblonian menace the big brain thought to himself. Then to his followers:

Come, there is nothing left to be done here, and much to be done elsewhere. Signal the others; I have come to a decision. At long last it is time for us to come out of hiding 

Excited queries jumped back and forth between the underlings. None of them knew what to make of this announcement. It was amusing that they did not realize he heard every last one of their thoughts. Finally one of them had the courage to ask directly.

Sir, does this mean that the war has begun? 

Yes. Spread the word; the invasion of Earth begins in 12 hours, and this time we will let nothing stop us. 

When Leela opened her eyes she found herself sitting in the dark, restrained to a chair. It took a moment for her to remember why exactly that made any sense. Before she tried to move she first did a mental survey of her own body. She ached all over, but at least nothing felt broken. Forcing her stiff body to cooperate, Leela switched on the dim light of her wristamajig and carefully untangled herself from her harness. Standing was a little easier than she had expected it to be. Carefully she worked her way to the emergency supply closet that was at the back of the bridge. She easily found the emergency candles and matches behind the clown suit. "Someone really needs to get rid of this thing," she remarked to herself for the hundredth time, but she knew it would never happen. Somehow the clown suit had become a traditional part of the ship, just as important as pre-blastoff ice cream sundaes and in-flight drinking games.

Once there was enough light to see by, Leela knew her next objective should be restoring some power. Candle light was good and all, but all the candles in the universe couldn't protect her from the brutal cold of space that was seeping through the hull, or provide her with clean air to breathe. Unfortunately there was no response from any of the bridge consoles. The only way that all of the emergency power could fail at once was if every last battery onboard had been completely drained. "That's what those weird green rays did," Leela realized. "Somehow they sucked the energy right out of the circuits." If she was going to get power back she would have to get the darkmatter reactor working again, which meant she had to get to the engine room. Still, Leela found herself reluctant to leave the safety of the bridge and go rummaging about the dark corridors by candelight. "If only Fry and Bender were here, it wouldn't be so damned spooky." Suddenly she remembered the urgency of her mission. She had to get to Earth, and she had to do it _immediately_ if she was going to complete her mission. "Pull yourself together Turanga," she commanded herself. "If the brains knew I was still alive they would have gotten me already. They aren't hiding in ambush in the hallways."

Unconvinced but refusing to show any kind of weakness even to herself, Leela grabbed a candle in one hand and headed toward the hatch. She hesitated a moment before opening it. Reaching a decision, the PE captain took a few steps backward and reached into the emergency locker. She rummaged around for a moment before her hand found what she was looking for. She pulled out a sleek little laser pistol and checked it's charge. It wasn't much, and she wouldn't need it, but it would make her feel better to have it. Now Leela walked to the hatch with a bit more confidence in her step. She hit the manual release and stepped back. The door creaked as it was slowly drawn apart by hydraulics hidden in the bulkhead. Brandishing the most primitive of lights in one hand and the most modern of weapons in the other, The PE captain took a deep breath and walked into the dark corridor.

Leela reached the engine room with the blood pounding in her ears but otherwise without incident. She was relieved to find that the reactor was in good shape. It had shut itself down when it detected a power loss to its monitoring systems, but the darkmatter was still hot enough that Leela soon had it running as good as new. The lights came on a few moments later.

Back on the bridge, Leela ran a full diagnostic on all of the ship's systems. Life support was chugging away at full capacity, the reactor was running smoothly, navigational and defensive systems were up and operating. The engines, however, were another story. The exhaust nozzles had gotten pretty banged up while the ship was skidding along the ground. They were fixable, but it was going to require some sledge and blowtorch work. Luckily the professor insisted on keeping those exact tools onboard at all times, just in case some incriminating fender damage had to be removed in a hurry.

It was a bit of tricky business trying to wriggle through the laser turret dressed in a bulky spacesuit. Normally Leela would have made Fry do it, and then gotten Bender to give him a quick shove through the narrow spaces. Still, Leela managed to work her way up the ladder, squeeze between the chair and the firing console, disengage the clamps that held the transparent dome to the top of the ship, and then lift the dome and climb out onto the hull without getting hopelessly stuck. The PE captain shook her head to clear it of the headache that she felt coming on. The throbbing dissipated but didn't go away; maybe she hadn't quite come out of the crash unscathed after all. Oh well, a headache was easily ignored. Leela did a quick scan of her surroundings. The radar hadn't shown any brains nearby, but you didn't survive long as a Planet Express employee by relying on instruments alone.

The landscape was typical interplanetary space rock. A flat, grayish plain stretched to the too-close horizon in one direction. It was unbroken save for a few small craters and the deep trough that the Planet Express ship had cut as it had come down. The other direction consisted of an impossibly high vertical wall.

Leela activated her suit's maneuvering jet and flew the short distance to the damaged engines. She sighed when she saw the damage. The metal was bent and warped where it had smashed into the surface of the moon. The fusion torch glared into life with a flick of a switch. Leela's helmet immediately increased its opaqueness to compensate. Sighing again and shaking her head to clear it, Leela maneuvered to within reach of the hull and started to work. She didn't notice the bright white spark that flew by overhead.

Progress was slow, much slower than she had expected. The damage was extensive, and it had to be fixed perfectly. If the engine exhaust was deflected by any kind of impurity in the nozzles it would send the ship careening out of control. Leela's body was screaming at her to drop everything and take off. It was everything she could do to supress the urge and concentrate on what she knew had to be done. Worst of all, time was running out. Nibbler had purposely sent her back in time so that she would get back to Earth only a few hours before the brains attacked. After all, if Leela altered the series of events that had led to her past-self falling into the freezer tube, who knows what could happen? Unfortunately, Nibbler hadn't taken into account the possibility of being marooned for six hours on a lump of rock… "Stupid brains," she muttered between slams of her anvil, "what the hell were they doing on that planet anyway? They can't have known that I was going to be there, could they?"

Eventually there just wasn't any more time. Leela could float around pounding at her ship for the next ten hours or the next hundred years. It wasn't going to matter, she was still going to be too late. Making one last inspection, Leela clicked off her torch and slid it back into its pouch at her waist. Satisfied, she throttled up the jet at her back and coasted expertly over the ship's tail section and back to the laser turret. It was even more difficult going in than it was coming out.

Leela bolted for the cockpit, shedding bits of spacesuit as she ran. Once she was buckled into her captain's chair she paused to think for a moment. What were the chances that she was going to blow herself to hell? Small, but not nil. Good, those were better than average odds for any mission she'd ever flown for Planet Express. Leela jabbed the button that would start the engines. There was a low hum which steadily built to a roar. Something clanged loudly several times. Leela held her breath, but nothing else happened. Cautiously, The PE captain pulled back on the throttle, pushing the ship into reverse. There was a great deal of scraping and grumbling as the ship shook itself free, but after several tense moments there was nothing outside the front viewport but the blackness of space. One last check of the radar yielded no contacts. Leela put a course into the navigational computer and shoved the throttle as far forward as it would go. Finally, and at long last, she was going home.

The Planet Express ship flew uncontested through empty space. Leela, having run out of things to do hours ago, occupied herself by pacing up and down the length of the cockpit. She was worried. The crash had eaten up too much time. By the time she made it back to Earth the brains would have already begun their attack; it was too late to stop it. Somehow she'd failed her mission before it had even really had a chance to begin.

"At least I'll still have a chance to save Fry," she reassured herself. "… if I don't somehow manage to screw that up too."

Unfortunately, Nibbler didn't know the exact time that the PE building had gone up in a fireball. However, he had mentioned that the sun was going down when it happened. That made it sometime around 6pm, plus or minus ten minutes or so.

There was a timer displayed on one of the bridge monitors. It was steadily ticking down until the ship's computer would signal that the ship had re-entered the solar system, which it had estimated at about 5:35. Leela glanced at it for the hundredth time. An hour and a half to go… The Planet Express ship was one of the fastest ships in existence but to Leela it seemed as though she was clunking along like some primitive 20th century space shuttle. She sighed and went back to pacing.

The Planet Express ship rocketed out from behind the cover of the sun and set the tiny glimmer of Earth in its sights. The brains had done a thorough job. Sensors showed the space around Earth littered with the wreckage of the DOOP navy.

A legion of brainspawn rose up from the planet's surface to meet the intruder as Leela passed the orbit of The Moon. They tried to block her path, but this time their enemy was ready for them. A torpedo arced away from the ship. The brains tried to break it apart as they had done to all of the DOOP weapons that had gotten too close, but Nibbler had warned Leela that they would try this. The torpedo detonated remote detonated as soon as the brains got a grip on it with their strange appendage-like force fields, coming well short of its target. Leela had known that that would happen too. That's why she'd spent a good portion of her trip home searching the ship for things she could pack inside the torpedoes. Bits of silverware, rubble from the crash, and even the sledge hammer she had used to fix the ship went flying in all directions. They pounded on the brains and on the ship with equal number and force. The brains however, didn't have the luxury of a metal hull. The PE ship held its course and hurtled through the stunned squad, and entered the atmosphere a few moments later. The ship's clock read 5:36.

The towers of New New York came suddenly into view as the ship broke through a patchy layer of thunderheads. The city was still there! The brainspawn were everywhere. A group of them gathered over one of the taller skyscrapers. The building began to glow softly green and then all at once erupted in a pillar of flame. Horrified and furious, Leela altered course to intercept the brains that were gathering about the giant torch. She fired her other torpedo and caught the mob off guard. The fireball engulfed a dozen of them and the shrapnel took care of the rest. Down on the ground their was the sound of cheers, but Leela couldn't hear them through the hull.

The brains had been too distracted with their rampage to pay much attention to one harmless-looking spaceship, but now Leela had their full attention. At least a hundred brains broke off to engage the Planet Express ship. Normally Leela would have taken them on, but there wasn't any time. Rolling over and putting her ship into a backward summersault, Leela took off toward Planet Express. The brains chased her through the tangled maze of metal and concrete. Bender had been bugging Leela to let him take the ship on a joyride through the streets of New Manhattan for ages. Now Leela remembered why she had always said no.

Finally, with one last gut-wrenching maneuver, Leela sent the ship rolling sideways through a gap between two close buildings and across the water to Planet Express. It was still intact! That meant Fry was still alive! One of the brains' greenish rays passed close by to port. Leela pushed the nose downward and held course for a split second more. Hoping to catch her pursuers off guard, she suddenly threw the engines into reverse, suddenly stopping the ship in midair. The brains went streaming by on all sides, not having had time to react. They'd be back soon enough. Leela extended the landing gear and cut the engines entirely. The ship dropped the couple of meters to the ground and landed in the middle of an empty street with a jarring thud. Having come to the decision that she didn't want the brains to get their grubby feelers on her time-amajig while she was gone, Leela grabbed it and rushed off the bridge. The ship's clock read 5:42.

It was only a short run to the Planet Express building. God it was good to see it in one piece again. The sound of laser fire from somewhere inside the structure woke Leela from her momentary reverie. She stepped forward cautiously, waiting for the automatic door to sense her presence. The door swished open, and Leela rolled through the sudden opening. She took shelter for a moment behind an overturned table and waited for any sign that she had been spotted. Sure enough, a single brainspawn came floating boldly into the hall. It stopped a meter or so from her position and stopped, as if listening. Leela grew impatient; there wasn't enough time for stealth damnit! She jumped from her hiding place and leveled her pistol at the giant hovering space-nerd. Unbelievably, it started to laugh at her.

Hahaha… Foolish human, did you really think you were hidden from me behind that pitiful piece of furniture? I saw you the moment you entered the building. I also see the time travel device that you are holding behind your back. You will now hand it over to me or I will reduce you to a babbling moron. 

Leela's eye narrowed. "I don't think so bub. If you're vision is so good then you also see the laser I have pointed at your squishy head, err, face, err whatever you call that wrinkly mess. Now shut up and tell me, where is Fry?"

The crazy idiot with the spiky red hair? I killed him. His screams were most amusing. 

"Liar!" Leela fired her weapon, blowing a chunk out of the wall not six inches from the brain. "Now listen very carefully. I am not in the mood for mind games with some giant hackeysack. If you try and lie to me again I swear I'll shoot you full of holes and then beat you until you look like a wad of used chewing gum, understand? Now let's try this again. Where is Fry?"

Now there was some uncertainty in the brainspawn's voice. N-now let's not be hasty. I wasn't serious. I don't even know who you're talking about. Who's Fry? The Mighty One? Never heard of him… 

Leela's finger started to depress the trigger.

Alright, alright! He's barricaded himself in one of the rooms in the tower, but it doesn't matter. The Big Brain just sent word; its got something special planned for him. Just wait a few minutes and Fry will be easy to find. He'll be everywhere! The brain started to laugh hysterically.

It was too much for the PE captain. She screamed and fired, sending the abruptly silent brain plopping to the floor. Panic stricken, Leela ran through the halls without regard to her own safety. Fry was in the tower! She had to get there before it was too late!

A pair of brains spotted Leela as she ran through the building. They gave chase. Leela dodged them until she reached the turbolift. Two quick shots from the cover of the closing turbolift car dropped one brain, and then the other. There was the senstation of movement as the lift bore her upward. A few moments later the doors swished open again.

The brains floated one after the other through the smashed windows. Fry stood with his back against the iron bulk of the chimney cover, blasting away at whatever had the misfortune to blunder into his sights. The rest of the crew sat in a group at his feet. It was all Fry could do to convince his stupefied friends to keep still while he attempted to save their asses. "What a day for Leela to mysteriously vanish," he thought as he dodged a stray shot. The brains had quickly given up trying to use their dumbifying fields. Now they were using some kind of concentrated mental beam. From the smoking holes in the walls the delivery boy had deduced that it wouldn't be a good idea to get hit by one.

Fry saw the brain that had just tried to, well, fry him. It was still a long way off, coming in over the water. Closing one eye, the delivery boy steadied himself and took aim, slowly depressing the trigger. "Careful… Careful…" he whispered to himself. The brain floated into his crosshairs. "Almost…" The elevator door swished open.

Fry's body whirled around to meet this new threat. His finger squeezed the trigger instinctively as Leela came rushing into the room. The beam of yellow light cut through the air and buried itself in a barrel; a barrel marked: "Danger, antimatter! Do not store near epic battle."

Fry and Leela stared at each other, then the barrel, and then once more at each other. Then the world exploded.


	4. Part 4

Part 4 

The pain was excruciating. It was the one constant; the only force that existed in the universe. Every once in awhile, when she could form thoughts at all, Leela would ask herself if she was still alive. Each time the pain assured her that she was, at least for now

Hours later she awoke to find herself lying face down on something cold and metallic. There was something pressing down on her from above; not pinning her to the ground, but making its presence known nonetheless. The scant light that sifted down to her from up above was barely enough to illuminate her surroundings. There was broken concrete and twisted metal everywhere. Apparently she was in a giant pile of rubble, probably the remains of the Planet Express tower. A light breeze wafted a thin plume of acrid smoke into Leela's face. It smelled vaguely of burning lobster.

The pain was coming in bursts now. Leela tried to move her arms and legs, but they ignored her completely. Even turning her head was excruciating, but she gritted her teeth and did it anyway. For a moment her vision blurred and she thought she might black out again, but then her head cleared and the world gradually came back into focus. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the shape of something familiar. It was the time device, perched near the edge of a dark pit only a couple of inches from her right hand.

"Got to… Got to go back…" The words came out around a trickle of red.

With all the mental control she could muster, Leela willed her right hand to reach out for the object. The pain from the inch that she gained was unbearable. She tried again, and then again. Her ring finger stretched out as far as it would go, finally brushing the smooth surface of the machine. Very, very carefully Leela began to turn the dial and press the embedded buttons with the tip of her finger. The whole device rocked back and forth dangerously in its precarious position. Finally she was able to get the little holographic screen to come on. The displayed time slowly began to turn backward. Leela's pain clouded mind was becoming impatient. She knew that she should stop and think about what she was doing, but it hurt so much to think clearly.

"Got to go back, everything... will be ok, gotta go back."

She stabbed at tbe buttons, sending the device sliding closer to the edge. A tremor reverberated through the whole pile of rubble as something massive shifted overhead. Newton's laws slapped Leela once more in the face as the rocking time machine began to roll, and then finally to fall. It dropped a good ten feet and then collided with a metal beam. Leela could only watch in horror as the device vanished in a burst of light. The hologram read "5:47pm". Succumbing completely to despair, Leela let herself fall into a state of total oblivion.

Leela awoke with a start, surging involuntarily into a sitting position. A moment later her brain caught up with her amd tensed her body for the wave of agony that was sure to come. There was a scream of pain, but Leela discovered with more than a little surprise that it wasn't hers. She opened her eye.

Nibbler lay sprawled against a nearby wall for the second time in two days, or the first time in 1000 years depending on your point of view. Even more astonishing, Leela was able to look at him from a sitting position without blacking out. In fact, there wasn't any pain at all.

"No pain," she thought, "That's impossible. Am I hallucinating?" She pinched herself. "Ow! OK, so this is real. Wait, where am I?"

A quick survey of her surroundings yielded a poorly lit pocket in a mountain of broken concrete and tacky carpeting, maybe the remains of an office in the PE building.

"Nibbler? What the hell is going on?" she asked, still not quite sure if she was dreaming.

The Nibblonian opened his mouth to respond, hesitated for a moment, and dropped a small cylindrical object that he had been holding. He held his deer-in-the-headlights pose for a moment or two before seemingly reaching a decision. Instead of answering Leela in the deep, authoritarian voice that she had become accustomed to he let loose a wild string of meaningless babbling noises and began running randomly about the room. Leela blocked him out as her mind finally had the chance to process the fact that by all rights she should be dead. At least, that had been the plan after seeing her one ticket to saving the universe poof into another timeline. Still, somehow she'd managed to survive... Nibbler was still running about the room. The noise was starting to give the PE captain a headache. Having had enough, she grabbed the furry little creature by the scruff of his neck as he ran by and held him up to her face. "Don't play dumb with me," she warned, "I know who you are. Now tell me what the hell is going on here!"

Nibbler hesitated while he digested this turn of events, but as soon as his silence was becoming suspicious he made up his mind, letting out a well executed belch. A moment later the ensuing string of mindless babbling was cut short by Leela's narrowing eye.

"You 'bout done?" The words carried the unspoken promise of a world of hurt.

Nibbler cleared his throat nervously. "I see that it is impossible to deceive you any longer. Very well," he said, "but could you put me down please? My skin stretches quite easily." Leela rolled her eye but did as she was asked. The Nibblonian drew himself up into a more dignified position, or at least the most dignified position that a guinea pig with an eyestalk could possibly obtain. "My name is Lord Nibbler, supreme commander of the Nibblonian Fleet. I have been assigned here to Earth to-"

Leela cut him off with an impatient gesture. "Yeah Yeah, I know all about you and Fry and the brainspawn, don't give me any of that long-winded dark prophecy crap of yours. Just tell me what happened after the blast. Why am I alive? Did the brainspawn conquer Earth? Is the universe doomed?" She paused a moment before adding softly "Is Fry dead?"

"Your body was badly damaged when I found you. It took all my skill with the robosurgeon," he gestured to the metal cylinder he had dropped moments earlier, "to heal you. If I had been an hour later in getting to you it would have been too late. As for your other questions..." Nibbler didn't speak for a long time; long enough for Leela to guess the answers. "I'm sorry Leela," he said sadly, "but I'm afraid that the answer to all of them is yes." Leela's heart nearly ripped itself in half.

"Then I've failed. My parents, Fry, Bender; the whole damned universe was depending on me and I failed. No, even worse; I caused exactly what I was trying to stop. I- I killed Fry." It was a whisper. "I killed Fry. Not the brainspawn, me. Oh god, Fry I'm so sorry!" The tears came then. Nibbler watched the scene for a few moments unsure what to do, but when the tears didn't dry themselves up he walked over and put an arm around his friend's shoulder.

"Leela, I know you are distressed but the present holds no time for tears. The brains are still all around us, patrolling for survivors. Now that I know that my cover is blown there is no need for theatrics on my part to get you to do what must be done. This will give us a few precious moments to escape. We must flee, for if they find us here they will destroy us. I do not know where it came from, but there is a working spaceship in the street nearby; a ship identical to the one that is sitting incapacitated in the hangar. We can use it to escape but as my mighty arms are not long enough to reach the controls, I require you to fly it. I know it is much to ask, but please, will you do this?"

Leela pushed Nibbler's arm away. Her voice came haltingly between sobs. "I've lost... everything in the... universe that... ever meant anything... to me... _twice_. Please... give me... some time..."

There was no way in the multiverse that Nibbler could argue with that. He just stood there helplessly and watched his friend and caretaker as she wept. There was absolutely nothing he could do for her, and he discovered that this fact terrified him like all of the brainspawn in the galaxy could not. Reaching a decision, the supreme commander of the Nibblonian fleet pushed aside thoughts of the death squads that were surely roaming the city, scuttled over to his human friend, and curled up in her lap.

No brains accosted the two companions as they sat huddled together through the night. Somehow their little hideaway had been overlooked. Nibbler had fallen asleep almost immediately upon planting himself in her lap, but Leela had spent the night wide awake.. When the tears finally stopped Leela had had time to think; to analyze everything and try and come up with something she could have done differently. So many things had gone wrong; it was like somebody up there was playing a cruel joke. Leela's own accidental freezing, being shot down on that asteroid, scaring Fry into shooting that barrel, and then to top it off with the loss of the time machine. It was like some horrible nightmare, or a bad novel written by a moron with a sadistic sense of humor. "I hope it's the second choice," she said to herself, "at least lousy novels usually end up with the good guys on top... Unless they don't."

Nibbler began to stir. Leela stroked the hair behind his eyestalk. "Are you ready?", the Nibblonian asked. The tone of the alien's voice was gentle, not at all impatient.

Leela tried a fake smile but only achieved a grimace. "Yes I think so. Thanks for waiting for me."

Nibbler also tried his luck at a fake smile, but it looked even worse on his face than it had on Leela's. "It was my pleasure to assist The Other." The Nibblonian walked to an opening between two pieces of jagged plasmetal and stuck his head out. A moment later he scurried through the gap, turning around just long enough to gesture for his friend to follow.

The cyclops and the tri-clops carefully worked their way through the tangled remains of the Planet Express building's south tower and out into the street. They were careful to stay in cover as they worked their way to the Planet Express Ship, which was still parked on its haunches in the middle of the road. The building, the street, and the ship were all eerily deserted. It was almost as if the brains had never been there at all. The strange silence was enough to make the hair stand up on Leela's neck, but she wasn't going to complain. A lucky break was a lucky break after all.

The PE captain did a quick run-through of the ship's systems and then started up the engines. A minute later three blips appeared on the radar, but they were moving much too slow to interfere. The Planet Express Ship rocketed skyward while the brains were still miles out of range.

The stars drifted lazily by. As had become habit over the years, Leela stared blankly at them until her mind worked itself into a kind of trance. It was the only way she could give herself a break from the thoughts and emotions that were roiling about inside her. Usually she put herself in this quasi-stupor to give herself a chance to ignore whatever stupid thing Fry was presently engaged in saying or doing. This time she was doing it to force herself to forget that he wasn't there.

Something clued Leela in to the fact that Nibbler was speaking to her. The PE captain fought to hold her hard-won state of oblivion, but it wasn't any good. She was awake again.

Nibbler seemed to notice the glazed expression on his companion's face. "I apologize. Sometimes my race's highly evolved manner of speaking can be hard to follow. I know that you were trying your best to pay attention. How much do you need for me to repeat?"

"Stupid condescending rodent," thought the cyclops. What she said was: "Uhh, better start from the beginning."

"Very well. I was recounting the gruesome series of events of the last 24 hours. It all began when the brainspawn, the sworn enemy of my race, appeared suddenly at the fringes of the Earth's solar system. It was lucky that there happened to be a cargo ship within sensor range at the time or the brains wouldn't have been detected at all."

Leela cut him off. "I know I know, I've heard the story already. Didn't I tell you that I've come from the future to stop the attack?"

The Nibblonian stared at her for a few seconds. "Umm... No, you mentioned nothing of the sort. This makes several statements you made earlier much more clear..."

Leela gave him a funny look. "I didn't?" she asked with just a bit of incredulity. "Wow, I could have sworn that I had. Oh well... Yeah, the reason you couldn't find me today was that I got myself frozen in a cryotube over at the place I've been working since I got fired. I woke up a few days ago, uhh I mean a thousand years from now, to find New New York in ruins, the Earth a barren wasteland; you know, standard apocalypse stuff. It was really pretty awful."

"But somehow you found a means to return to this time period?" The Nibblonian made a series of excited babbling noises before continuing: "Please, I know it will be hard on you, but you must describe your ordeal to me. It is imperative that I hear every word, every minor detail. Knowledge of the future would be a devastating weapon against the brainspawn; it might even br enough to assure victory in the intergalactic war that is surely to come now that the brains have taken Earth! Please, you must tell me what happened to you."

"Is it really that important?" The expression on Nibbler's face amswered for him.

The PE captain sighed and sat deeper into her chair. It would be painful to purposely dredge up the events of the past few days and scrutinize them again, but if Nibbler really thought it could be useful...

"Alright, I... I guess if you really have to hear it now."

Leela mentally gritted her teeth and dove into the story. She explained how she had been frozen and then awakened a millennium later to face the decaying ruins of New New York. Nibbler's head drooped as she described her walk through the desolation of the city. She passed over the part where she had been chased through the streets by her own fears and skipped to the point where she met future-Nibbler, neglecting to mention the part where she tossed him across the room. It only took a few more minutes to explain the plan and the way she had managed to fling herself back in time, only to be marooned and then arrive too late to help. Finally, steeling herself against the tears that she knew would come; she forced herself to explain those last moments in the tower and the loss of the time machine.

"... And then Fry squeezed the trigger and I was flying through the air, and then everything went dark." She had to pause for a moment to gather herself together, but she knew that Nibbler had to hear this so she forced herself to continue. "I woke up once, maybe for 5 minutes. I was in so much pain that I couldn't think straight. I tried to make the time device work but... but it fell and disappeared. Then I passed out again, and when I woke up you were standing over me." There was something that seemed wrong about that last part. What was it?

"And you would have soon been dead if I had not happened to come across your body in the ruins while searching for Fry's. It is lucky that I had had the foresight to retrieve my medical kit from my ship before the brains began their invasion. Astonishing. If the universe survives, your tale surely will be entered into the great chronicles of Eternia, where countless generations will hear of your quest and learn of the bravery and will of The Other. It is a shame then that..."

Nibbler, the ship, and the lazy stars all blurred together into a gauzy silence as Leela let herself zone out again. This time though it wasn't to avoid thinking. Something was bothering her, and if the last few days were any clue, it was best to pay attention to the little voice in the back of her head that was quietly but constantly whispering 'does not compute'.

"What's bothering me? Damn, this feels important but I have no idea what it is." The feeling had started when she was talking about what had happened in the tower. "No," she realized, "it was after that. Is it something about loosing the time machine? God, How could I have let that happen? I let the pain get to me. If only I'd reached out a little further and gotten a better grip... No, stop! There'll be time for hating myself later, I need to figure this out, and whatever it is that's bothering me, it's something besides failing everyone and everything I've ever cared about. But what is it?" She thought silently for a minute. "Nibbler. It has something to do with Nibbler... Something that he said in the future, about how she had vanished before the battle and was never seen again..."

"Why you manipulative, conniving, insensitive little bastard!" Leela crossed the few feet to her pet and grabbed him by the neck. In one fluid movement the terrified commander of the Nibblonian Fleet was pinned helplessly against the bridge bulkhead. Leela's other hand gave him a hard slap across the face.

"And to think I took care of you for all the years, spending every last penny on ham and diapers! This is how you repay me, by making me kill all of my best friends and Zoidberg! You used me!" She gave her captive a violent shake.

"Wait... please, I... don't... understand!" The Nibblonian's protests came out ragged as he tried to speak through the stranglehold that Leela had on his throat.

"Oh, you may not understand _now_, but you'll understand _later_. And since I can't strangle you for what you're going to do in a thousand years, I'll just have to do it _now_."

"Please... Leela, I... can't breathe..."

Disgusted, Leela released her captive and let him slide limply to the floor. Nibbler lay cowering against the bulkhead as an inexplicably furious cyclops stood towering over him. "What... What did I do?" he managed.

"Oh, it's not what you _did_; it's what you're _going_ to do. When I met you in the future you said that I disappeared right before the attack, 'and was never seen again'. Except that you see me right now, don't you!. You heard me tell you about being ambushed and shot down on that asteroid and then getting to Earth too late to help. You heard me tell you about what happened to Fry and the others at Planet Express. That means in the future you knew about all of this, and did _nothing_." The words were said with such raw loathing that Nibbler felt each one of them as a blow in the chest.

Leela wasn't done. "Oh my god, it's even worse than that. You sent me back to the past knowing exactly what would happen!" By now Leela was screaming. "All that crap about time paradoxes that you gave me... that's why you let me go isn't it? You knew that I killed Fry and Bender and the others, so you sent me back in time to make sure it would happen! Is that it? Tell me!"

Nibbler's mouth worked silently for a time while his confused mind tried to wrap itself around the accusations that were being flung at him. He started several times to speak but always fell silent again immediately. After all, what was he to say? How do you defend your actions when you wont actually do them for a thousand years?

"I... I do not know what to say." Not an eloquent or particularly safe answer, but it was the truth. "You will not believe me if I deny this, but I also do not believe my future self would be guilty of such a heinous act. What would be to gain from it? You already know that my people believe Fry's special mind to be the sole remaining hope for the survival of the universe; what possible reason would I have to send you through a series of events that I knew would end in his death?"

Leela stopped angrily pacing the bridge. Even through her flaming temper she had to admit that she had no answer to that question.

The Nibblonian began to speak faster, sensing that he might be gaining ground. Now it was his turn to get up and pace the bridge, keeping his nervous body occupied while his brain worked itself into high gear. "Without Fry there is no hope of fighting the brain's stupefaction rays, which as I am sure you have witnessed, render all sentient beings defenseless against the brainspawn onslaught. To knowingly bring about his demise would be considered high treason amongst my people, and to use you, the person who has befriended me and cared for me for these past years as the means to carry out such a terrible crime... It would be more of a burden on my admittedly iron will then I could imagine enduring..." The Nibblonian stopped his pacing and turned to face his accuser. "Tell me, did I ever give you cause to question my motives during your time in the future?"

Leela prepared to shoot back a stinging list of examples, but she was surprised to find that she could find none. She searched harder but still nothing came to mind. "Alright, so I've got nothing. But how do you explain this conversation we're having right here, right now? You don't actually expect me to believe that you forgot that it was sending me back in time that killed the single hope of the universe, do you?" Her voice dripped venom.

"No, it is not likely that I would forget such an important fact, but perhaps there is another explanation... What did my future self tell you about time paradoxes?"

The unexpectedness of the question threw Leela off balance. "Huh? I mean- Uhh, nothing good. He mentioned ripping holes in space-time and something like quantum nullification... I wasn't really paying attention."

"It has been many years since elementary school quantum mechanics, but I believe that it may be possible for my future self to have sent you back in time without any hidden agenda and yet not make it impossible for my present self to have this conversation with you."

"But that's a paradox. Your future self said that time paradoxes destroy the universe. Unless of course he lied about that too."

"No, you are correct. Two timelines have been created, one where you disappear right before the brainspawn invasion and one where I find you injured in that pile of rubble. Both timelines cannot exist congruously in a single universe without generating the cosmic blue screen of death... There can be only one answer..."

"You mean other than the one where you're a traitorous liar?"

Nibbler responded with a patient expression. Leela stared back at him, but she averted her eye after a few moments. "Alright", she said- "I'm sorry. I'll listen."

"Thank you. As I was saying, there is a solution to our conundrum. Time is by definition a very strange, very fluid construct. We lifeforms tend to think of events in terms of cause and effect, past and future, but that is not in reality how the universe is structured. Time is more malleable than that. We have created a paradox yes, but that does not necessarily guarantee the end of all things as long as something happens to undo the damage to the space-time continuum."

"Undo the damage? What are you talking about? Everyone's dead! She gestured to the cylinder that had saved her life hours earlier but which now lay forgotten by the hatch. "Unless your little screwdriver of healing over there also specializes in patching holes in time."

"No, though it does play 'wheels on the bus' if you press the clown face on the side... But no, what we need is a time machine."

Leela rolled her eye. "Yeah great. All we need is a time machine. Too bad the only time machine in existence is stuck in the past where only a time machine can reach it."

"Ah, but there is where you are wrong, for you see, the present _is _the past."

That statement got nothing but a blank stare.

"You said that, according to my future self, the brains developed the time machine in 'the distant past'. You also said that a legion of attack brains currently occupy the time machine planet, which likely means that the brains have something there that they feel must be protected. If my future self told you was correct in regards to the ancient nature of the device, and that is quite possible considering he correctly predicted it's existence and precise location..."

Leela was way ahead of him. "Then the device might be sitting there in that tower where I found it the first time! Oh my god, I can go back in time again! I can still fix this!" Suddenly she was laughing, though a moment earlier she would have thought it impossible. Vaulting back into the pilot's seat, Leela grabbed the wheel and turned it hard to port. The Planet Express ship went into a wide turn and then began to accelerate. A pair of blue sparks lay directly ahead.

It was a small stroke of luck that the random escape trajectory that Leela had flown from Earth had been in the general direction of the time machine planet. Even so, it took eight hours of excruciating inactivity for Eta Orionis to swell into the familiar pair of dust shrouded stars. The sight made Leela sick to her ass.

The PE captain banked her ship downward toward the cover of a comet's ice tail, cutting the power when the ship was sufficiently deep in the murk. As Refracted light from the larger sun bathed the cockpit in gauzy white light she prayed that the little ball of dirty frozen water would shield the Planet Express ship from the brains.

"Nibbler, we're here," Leela called over her shoulder. "Wake up!" She turned around again to monitor her instruments.

There was the sound of muffled whining noises as Nibbler awoke from his nap. The Nibblonian appeared at Leela's side a moment later.

Leela heard her friend approach but didn't take her eye from the sensor display. "No brains so far. The radar is clear, the stereo-opticon is blank, and the radio is silent. Either they already know wer're here and they're waiting in some planet's radar shadow for us to fly into a trap, or they're all busy wiping out the last traces of human civilization."

Nibbler shook his head, a gesture he had learned from his human companion expressed disagreement. "It would be unusual for the brains to leave something they deem valuable completely unguarded."

He paused for a few seconds to think. "I suggest we proceed with caution."

Leela nodded distractedly, still pouring over her instruments. "Yeah I think so too, but then again they did leave it unguarded in the future."

"Only because they had wiped out all meaningful resistance. I am certain that they would have posted a guard if they had known that I was alive and in possession of a working starship."

"That makes sense." She couldn't stop herself from adding silently: "Unless they thought one lone space gerbil wasn't much of a threat." Her mouth twitched upward into the tiniest hint of a grin, but Nibbler didn't appear to notice.

Finally content that there really was no activity on any of her displays, Leela allowed herself to relax a moment. She looked over at Nibbler and smiled. "You ready?" she asked.

"Affirmative."

"Alright then, head back to the laser turret. I installed those phonebook- I mean- chair upgrades that you wanted, so you shouldn't have any trouble reaching the joystick. Now just promise me that you won't shoot anything until I give the order."

Nibbler looked offended. "You forget that I am a highly trained warrior. I am perfectly capable of determining the appropriate time to use a weapon."

If there was one thing that Leela was not going to tolerate on her ship it was insubordination. "And I'm the captain. Plus I've got at least three and a half feet on you. That means when you are on my ship you listen to my orders." She got up from her chair to emphasize her second point, looking down at Nibbler with her arms crossed and her eye narrowed. "Got it?" she asked. There was a bit more of a warning in the question than she had intended.

"Y-yes captain." Nibbler cringed. He was generally fearless, but after witnessing firsthand what this monstrous cyclops woman could do to him, no one could blame him if he took her unspoken threats a bit more seriously.

"OK maybe I laid it on a little too thick there," Leela thought to herself. "I think it's about time to switch tactics." It was one thing to establish the chain-o-command, but there wasn't any reason why she had to make Nibbler terrified of her. "This threatening the crew with an ass-kicking every time they don't do what I want thing comes to me way too easily. I guess I've just had to use it on Bender so many times that it's gotten hardwired into me. Stupid robot, driving me to violence because he's too lazy to do his job unless someone makes him. If the universe ever does end up getting saved I'll have to remember to kick his ass... Damn, there I go again!"

Nibbler was fidgeting nervously, waiting for Leela to say something. Leela smiled at him to ease his mind.

"Alright good, I'm glad that's settled. Now off you go! I'll give you a couple of minutes to get settled and then I'll start powering up the engines. Let me know over the videocom when you're ready to go. It's the little red button next to the deathulator switch."

"Certainly. But if you don't mind my asking captain, if the little red button is the video-intercom then what does that big gaudy red one do?"

Leela shrugged. "Nothing. Fry likes- err, I mean liked- red buttons so much that the professor had that one installed to keep him occupied on really long delivery missions. Fry used to sit up there for hours pretending he was firing photon torpedos. Which is good, because until we installed that fake button he really _was_ firing photon torpedoes. But, ohh how he loved pressing that button..."

Nibbler nodded his understanding before turning to leave the bridge. He knew as well as Leela did that Fry fit every connotation of the word 'special'.

Leela watched the Nibblonian leave, noting that he didn't once look over his shoulder. "Hopefully that means he isn't afraid that I'm going to attack him anymore. He really is a cute little furball," she thought. "It's too bad he's got such a superiority complex. I mean, I'm just as understanding as the next person if not more, but there's just so much of other people thinking they're better than me that I can take."

The door swished shut behind the little black alien and Leela was suddenly alone on the bridge. Her thoughts immediately turned to the space battle that she really hoped was just ahead. Her pulse increased as she thought about what she was going to do to any brains that had the misfortune to be alive today. "If only I could be the one in that turret right now." She sighed, desperately wanting to feel that primal surge of adrenaline-boosted glee as she blasted her enemies into radioactive slag. Her fist balled in anticipation, but since Leela was the only one who could fly the ship, Nibbler would have to be the gunner. Revenge would have to wait. "A good captain does what's best for her ship and her crew, not for herself." It was Peter Parrot's second rule of command, and she hated it passionately.

"Captain?" Leela realized that Nibbler's face had been staring at her from a nearby monitor for some time. "I am ready."

"Wha- Oh sorry. I was just, uhh, _not _daydreaming in the middle of enemy territory." The cyclops felt her cheeks flush a little.

"Ahh I see, so you were partaking in the ancient arts of meditation; preparing every part of your mind and body for the trials of battle. That is most wise. My own race has been using the technique of meditation for thousands of years.

"Uhh yeah, meditation. That's exactly what I was doing. And now that I've found my body's spiritual center or some crap, I'm going to start up the engines like I meant to not have done already." She gave her friend her best I-really-do-know-what-I'm-doing smile before turning off the monitor. A few button pushes later and the familiar throb of the dark matter engines began to build through the hull.

Ha ha ha! You thought you could best me in a game of wits, but I have triumphed once again. Your puny attempts at subterfuge were laughable when matched against my boundless wit. Fool, I was ten moves ahead of you the whole time, and now you are doomed to tremble in horror as I bring about your total and utter humiliation. This is the end for you, my unworthy opponent. Now cower before me as I declare... Checkmate! Whuahaahahaha- Hey, I wasn't done taunting him! .

The group of brains scattered as their space-chessboard and one of their fellows vaporized in front of them. Leela gave chase, flying through a small cloud of pawns. The brains had been taken completely off guard, having been caught in the middle of their weekly training exercise. Slow and disorganized, they made easy pickings for a high powered laser cannon. In just a few minutes a combination of Leela's flying and Nibbler's shooting had cleared the space around the time travel planet of defenders.

"Well I feel a little better," The PE captain said aloud. "Not much, but a little." The windshield wipers worked noisily for a moment before Leela's activation of the videocom drowned them out.

Nibbler answered immediately.

"Yes captain?" he asked.

Leela really didn't like this new tone of formality that Nibbler was using with her. "Why do my friendships always get screwed up in some way or other?" she asked herself bitterly. "This always happens. Everybody ends up hating me, or feeling sorry for me, or afraid of me, or trying to burn me..."

"Please Nibbler, just call me Leela." She almost managed to keep the pleading out of her voice.

From the Nibblonian's expression it was pretty obvious that something was bothering him. "Of course Capt- uhh- Leela. What are your orders?"

Leela sighed inwardly. "Fine," she thought. "If he wants to be formal then let him. Hopefully in a few more minutes he'll forget today ever even happened... again." Aloud, Leela said: "I'm going to land the ship where the time device was when I was here last time. I need you to cover me while I get the device, you know, just in case we missed a brain or two."

Nibbler's halfhearted nod bothered her. She started to ask her suddenly distant friend what the problem was, but decided against it. "Knowing me it'll sound like a reprimand." Besides, she was almost sure that she knew what the trouble was.

"Look, I know you don't want me to risk my neck while you sit in the ship, but it's the only way that makes sense. I know right where to look and what to do to get at the timeotron or whatever we're calling it."

Nibbler nodded his head. "Yes of course. I agree with you completely."

"I know, I know and I underst- Wait, You do?" Leela blinked a couple of times. "Then what's bothering you?"

"N- nothing is bothering me." It was about as believable as one of President Nixon's anti-war speeches. Without the ensuing bloodbath of course.

"Come on Nibbler, just tell me. I've lived with you for years. Granted for most of them I thought you were a mindless eating machine but still, you can't say in all that time that we didn't become close enough to trust each other." Her voice wavered a little bit. "You do trust me... right?"

"Of course I trust you, Leela!" There was genuine shock in the alien's voice. "No, that was never an issue..." He sighed. "I am sorry to make you worry. I just feel guilty for not being able to help you. This will be the second time that you have gone back to take on the whole brainspawn armada by yourself. My inability to come back with you makes me feel slightly... inadequate."

"So that's it!" Leela realized. "He doesn't hate me, he just feels bad because he can't help me save the universe. Stupid males and their stupid egos." She sighed. "Oh well, time to be a good captain."

"But Nibbler," she said- laying on the reassurance like Pepto-Bismol at a Martian barbeque, "there's no way I could have done any of this without you. Think about it. How would I have ever gotten back to the past in the first place if it weren't for you? Sure things didn't work out and everybody died and the universe is doomed anyway..." Her voice trailed off. "Well that didn't quite come out as inspirational as I thought it would... Look, I know you feel guilty for not being able to come back with me, but the important thing is that in half an hour you won't know any of this ever happened. Because it won't have. Now let's go get that time machine and save this lousy reality once and for all!"

Nibbler wasn't convinced, but he also recognized the need for immediate action. The longer they waited around in orbit the longer the brains would have to realize that they had lost touch with their garrison here. It was even possible that a counterattack was already on its way from a nearby system. Anyway, his personal feelings were meaningless. All that mattered was getting The Other to Earth before the brains began their attack.

"Very well. I am ready." He cut the connection before he could show any more weakness.

Leela sighed. "God I need a drink."

On that note the cyclops pushed the throttle forward and sent her ship sliding into the dusty atmosphere. There was a good deal of turbulence this time as the sleek rocket shape cut its way through the jet stream. As the ship went lower the buffeting increased until it was all Leela could do just to keep her vessel airborne.

"What the heck is this about?" Leela wanted to know. She soon got her answer. Up ahead the sky went from crystal clear to cardboard brown.

"Great, because life just didn't suck enough already, a sandstorm." Leela voiced a couple of phrases she'd heard Amy use in these situations. The PE captain had no idea what they meant, but they sounded so much cooler than the curses she was used to. But wait; there was something else out there too. Leela squinted. At first all she could see was a dark brown blur in a light brown blur, but gradually a shape came into focus. A huge tower of black jutted out of the desert sand. It was the obelisk of the time machine.

The Planet Express Ship touched down fifty yards from the monolith. Leela had learned her lesson the last time she had been here. There would be no long hikes across endless seas of sand dunes, especially not with all this dust in the air. Her eye didn't take kindly to dust.

With the keys in the ignition and the engines still on idle, Leela made her way off the bridge and through her ship. She could hear the gun turret's hydraulics working as Nibbler scanned the shrouded skies for any sign of brain attack.

The wind hit Leela like a hammer as soon as she opened the airlock. Sand was immediately everywhere; down her shirt, in her boots, under her eyelid. Everywhere. It was like she was being buried alive while someone took a fusion belt sander to every exposed patch of skin. She opened her mouth to say a dirty word, but she immediately got a mouthful of desert for her trouble.

With her eye only a tiny slit, Leela groped her way to a small blurry shadow that had to be the stone pedestal she needed to gain access to the device. In perfect conditions Leela could use the apparent size of an object to guess its distance. A nearby person would seem larger than a distant spaceship, and since she could guess at how big that person and the ship would look if they were right next to her she could easily say that, not only was the spaceship farther away than the person, but that the person was ten yards away while the spaceship was half a kilometer away. It wasn't an exact technique, but it was almost always enough to get by with. In the middle of a sandstorm, well, that was a different story entirely. The pedestal turned out to be twice as far away as Leela had guessed, and by the time she finally got there she was beginning to wonder if what she was seeing was nothing but a mirage. But no, a half reluctant touch of the cold stone surface revealed it to be solid.

"Well here goes something, I hope." Leela pressed the familiar button on the pedestal's face, noting that she hadn't even had to brush sand away from it. Either the wind has conveniently moved the dune that had been hiding the pedestal, or the pedestal had been used recently.

The wind ripped at her ponytail as Leela worked her way to the giant crystalline face of the obelisk. By the time she crossed the short distance she was choking and spitting on airborne grit. She had been in a dust storm once on Mars, but it paled in comparison to this.

For a moment Leela let herself rest in the obelisk's wind shadow, but only for a moment. Presently her eye was drawn to what seemed to be a patch of discoloration on the crystal's surface. She walked over to investigate. Just as she had expected, the 'discoloration' was really the hole wherein she had found the time machine a millennium in the future. The metallic panel that had concealed the hiding spot lay on the ground nearby, half covered on blowing sand. Without letting herself consider too carefully what other things besides time machines might like to inhabit small dark places in the middle of a desert, Leela plunged her right arm into the chamber. Her hand immediately closed around a familiar shape. Then, as she was pulling the time device from its resting place, there came a prickly sensation on the back of her neck, followed by the sound of high-energy laser fire.

The PE captain looked around wildly. All she could see was the mass of the obelisk at her back and the distant hulk of her ship, now lit in a bloody red glow from reflected laser light. A volley of photons arced away from the ship and over her head. Nibbler had engaged the brains.

Every cell in Leela's body hollered at her in unison. "Don't just stand there you idiot! Move! Now!" And so she did, taking off at full speed in the direction of her ship, time device clutched protectively against her chest.

It took an eternity to get there. The sand and the wind resisted her as though they had a conscious desire to keep her from her goal. A needle thin line of fluorescent green hit the sand not ten feet away, leaving a small puddle of liquid glass. Leela ordered her body to run faster. Her body told her to shut up and pay attention to where she was going.

The Planet Express ship lit up again as another burst of laser fire went streaking right over her left shoulder. Something smacked into the desert nearby, making a 'thump' that was just barely audible over the angry screech of the wind. Leela ignored the sound and kept running. The ship was close. So close. All that mattered was getting to the ship. Only a few more feet...

With one final push Leela propelled herself up the foreword stairs. A black shape hurtled by overhead. Leela whirled around just in time to see Nibbler's mouth close around a disgusting mass of pink.

"Leela, now!" Nibbler hollered over his shoulder, pink grey matter still hanging from his fangs. Another one of the strange green death rays hissed into the ground at the Nibblonian's feet.

Leela did not have to be told twice. With her attention completely on the device in her hands, it was a combination of muscle memory and pure instinct that led her to the bridge. By the time she was in her seat the correct date already hung suspended in the air.

In the gloom outside the front view port Leela could see Nibbler standing erect, surrounded by twenty of his enemies. The Nibblonian commander did not back down, but stared at each one of his attackers in turn; daring them to make a move. The brains faltered momentarily, not sure what to make of this brazen act of defiance. Then, all at once, each brain fired one of its psychic beams, bathing the bridge of the Planet Express Ship in sickly green light.

Leela activated the device


	5. Part 5 Chapter 1 and 2

Part 5

Maybe it was because the difference in times was much shorter, or maybe it was simply that Leela knew what to expect, but for whatever reason her trip through time and space wasn't nearly as overwhelming as it had been before. There was the familiar sense of detachment from reality and then the strange distortions that skewed everything into bizarre colors and patterns, but this time it barely fazed her at all. Much the same thing had happened when she had eaten the lunch Bender had cooked for her the week before; She was used to it. When the distortions began to clear however, she felt a stab of dread. The ship tipped over and fell, sending the bile rising in the back of her throat. She wasn't terrified this time, but oh God how she hated falling. As the light ahead came rushing to meet her she couldn't help but close her eye.

Abruptly Leela sensed she wasn't falling anymore. Her eye snapped open. Outside were the familiar black mass of stone and the endless waste of glistening yellow-white sand. Leela was surprised to discover she had been holding her breath. It went out in a hiss and then caught again as an image sprang unbidden into her mind. Nibbler stood erect, surrounded by brains. There was a green flash…

"No!" With all of her strength, Leela clamped down on the horrid memory. She couldn't afford to think about that now. She had to be strong, for Nibbler's sake, not to mention for the trillions of other people in the universe that were depending on her.

"No pressure," Leela grumbled darkly.

Furious at herself for her momentary lapse, the cyclops turned her attention to her instruments. The radar registered one gigantic contact 50 million miles above and astern. Leela watched tensely as the amorphous blob on her screen moved about. The next few seconds might very well determine whether she made it out of this star system alive.

The contact, really a swarm of hundreds (if not thousands) of brains, was moving erratically, now towards her; now away. Just like she had hoped, the brains were occupied with something else; they hadn't seen her. Hopefully that meant the plan she had cobbled together in the past few minutes was working.

"Well," Leela admitted to herself, "maybe 'plan' isn't the right word; More like a vague feeling."

There hadn't exactly been time to sit around and strategize lately. Leela had chosen to come back to this exact time, knowing there was a good chance she could sneak away while the brains were busy, but that was the extent of her plan. As to what happened if she was wrong well, she would have to improvise as she went.

Cautiously Leela brought the still-idling engines up to full power. The ship lifted gently off the desert and hovered in place, shedding a fine coating of sand that had collected on the fins. Leela pulled up hard on the stick and stepped on the gas. Her ship glided smoothly into the sky.

It is nearly impossible to sneak through a heavily patrolled planetary system in a cargo ship. Still, Leela did the best the best job she could. Not surprisingly, that turned out to be a very good job indeed. In short, low power bursts from the dark matter engines the Planet Express Ship practically slunk from debris field to debris field, never lingering exposed in empty space for more than a minute at a time.

The computer flashed a warning. It had detected another ship's energy signature nearby and was having trouble understanding what the ship's sensors were reporting. A message appeared on the monitor screen next to the pilot seat. Leela cut power immediately, allowing momentum to carry her ship into the relative safety of the space between two heavily cratered asteroids. When she was convinced that her position was secure enough that she wouldn't wander blindly into the path of some random space rock, Leela allowed herself to take her eye off the space outside her front viewport and concentrate on what her computer was trying to tell her. As the computer's cockpit camera registered that Leela was now paying attention, the text on the monitor began to scroll. Leela's eye raced to keep up. The message read:

"_Error determining incoming vessel class/designation. Nav beacon indicates cargo ship/Planet Express Ship; homeport: Earth. Possible interference from our ship's own Nav beacon. Deactivating our beacon and commencing system diagnostic. Stand by."_

Leela relaxed noticeably. Her mouth twitched upward in the tiniest hint of a smile at the computer's confusion. She calmly instructed it to cancel its self-diagnostic. There was nothing wrong with the sensors or the Nav beacon of course. The ship's AI had never been programmed to accept its own identification signal coming from another ship. The programmers that had created the software had never dreamed a ship would travel back in time and find itself detecting the beacon from its past self.

"Hmm… I wonder why I never detected the beacon from this ship back when I was over there dodging the brains?". It was an interesting question. If she could detect the other ship, then there was no reason why the other ship couldn't detect her.

"Unless…" Leela brought up a log of her computer's activities right before she had crashed on the ice moon.

"Yep, there it is." Leela nodded and shut off the screen.

The computer had logged an odd signal while Leela had been busy careening between asteroids. According to the log, the ship's AI had decided not to risk breaking its captain's concentration with what it thought was a minor sensor error, especially when the ship it had detected wasn't showing any signs of being a threat.

For a few moments Leela let herself concentrate totally on the radar screen. It was very difficult to tell the individual contacts from the giant amorphous blob of the brainspawn swarm, but every once in awhile an individual dot would break away long enough for Leela to see that all of the other dots were chasing it. Leela felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. It hadn't really crashed home until just now what all of these dots on the screen represented; what exactly all of these brains were chasing so urgently. That lead dot, the one that was slowly but surely pulling away from its pursuers, it was The Planet Express Ship. Inside that distant vessel, a different Leela was coping with sudden power loss and desperately trying to find a way back to Earth after her first trip with the time device.

"It's terrible," mused present-Leela. "She- err, past me err, whatever. That other Leela over there thinks she's going to go flying to Fry's rescue and save the day in a blur of kick-ass Arcturan kung fu. That's how it's supposed to happen. That's how it _always_ happens. She, I guess 'I' really, doesn't have a clue what's going to happen once she finally gets home; what's going to happen to Fry…" Leela sighed quietly. If only she could risk sending a signal to her other self, but there was no way to know if the brains could pick one up and use it to discover that the ship they were chasing was not the only one to trespass in their star system. They had already disabled the PE ship once, and Leela had been lucky to make it out alive. She just couldn't risk letting herself get discovered and having it happen again.

"After all, who knows if I'll get another chance at this?"

A chill shot down her spine the moment she'd completed the thought. What if she _did_ get another chance at this? Was there another Leela hidden somewhere in this dust-shrouded star system? Was that future self sitting in her pilot's seat watching her radar screen, wishing she could warn her past self of some terrible tragedy that was just ahead? How many Leelas could there be? What if she spent the rest of her life living the next two days?

The PE captain turned these thoughts over in her mind for a few minutes while she stared blankly at her instruments.

"Well, I guess if there is another Leela and she is sitting in her ship wishing she could warn me of some tragedy, then that doesn't really change things. I still have a mission that has to be completed. Even if I do spend the rest of my life doing this, I… I have to do it. Even if the fate of the whole universe wasn't hanging over my head, I couldn't just give up after seeing what happened to Fry, after seeing that look in his eye a split second before… _it_ happened."

Something drew Leela's gaze to back to the radar screen. A few dozen brains had broken off from the main group. With alarm Leela realized that they were headed right at her. The PE captain did a quick estimate. The brains would be all over her in just over two minutes.

"Crap! What the heck did I do?" Thinking that she'd been had, Leela brought her engines up to full power. Her ship leapt forward. That's when it hit her. All this time she'd been avoiding the brains the way she had snuck by any other opponent. The key had always been to move slowly and stealthily, keeping her ship's energy signature as small as possible. If she did things right, enemy sensors would never even know she had been there at all. The tactic worked almost without exception, and it had become so ingrained in Leela's mind that she had employed it without question.

"But those damned pink wads of chewing gum don't detect my ship's energy output; they detect my brain! Argh, I've been as dumb as Fry!" The brainspawn had probably been too distracted with chasing the other Leela to notice a second Planet Express ship skulking away in the distance, that is, until Leela lit a veritable psychic flare with her intense thoughts about time travel and alternate selves. Now the enemy was on to her, and there was no way to stop broadcasting her presence, save slipping into a very deep, not to mention very convenient, temporary coma.

"Too bad Bender isn't here. I'd just ask him to cook me something. That might ruin my brain long enough to do the trick… Wait, isn't there some of that tofu left over from last Wednesday? Hmm, no that's right; Amy threw it out a couple of days ago. She said it was looking at her funny." Leela had never actually tasted the stuff, not having been able to stomach it after Bender revealed where it had come from.

"Come _on,_ big boots", he'd told her, it's called tofu right? How could it be any good if the fu didn't come from between somebody's toes?"

Since there was no way to mask her presence, there was really only one option. Leela had to flee and hope that her ship's dark matter engines could outpace whatever weird ability that propelled the brains through space. She'd been able to out-fly them before, but that was when there was a handy asteroid field nearby to slow them down. All that lay out the front window now was a few lonely comets and the black emptiness of interstellar space. The many asteroid fields, and the quickest route back to Earth, lay directly astern. Unfortunately, a cloud of brains now blocked that path.

Gradually the brains fell astern. Professor Farnsworth's amazing engines once again proved themselves to be a marvel of modern science. When the radar had been clear for a tense fifteen minutes, Leela couldn't make herself wait anymore. Every moment she wasted fleeing the brainspawn was one moment later that she reached Earth, and this knowledge was slowly driving her crazy. With a jerk on the wheel she sent her ship into a sudden nosedive, though with the ship's gravity pump working at full capacity there was no sensation at all. The PE captain held her breath for a few moments. If she had turned too early the brains would spot her. Now that she was moving perpendicular to her pursuers she could hope to get far enough away that the brains would simply pass by her on their original course, oblivious to the fact that their quarry was no longer ahead of them. Unfortunately, the laws of trigonometry and calculus got in the way;

"After all" Leela muttered darkly, "something always does."

As the brainspawn got closer and closer to the point in space where Leela had started her veer-off maneuver, the angle between the PE ship and the brains would grow smaller and smaller. If the difference between the Planet Express Ship's speed and the brains' speed wasn't high enough, the distance between them could actually decrease. If Leela had pulled off too early then the brains would get close enough to detect her mind again.

"That is, if I ever got far enough away that they lost track of me in the first place…"

Of course, it was pointless to worry about that now. All Leela could do was stay on this new course for awhile and then shut off the engines and wait. Either the brains would show up, or they wouldn't. If they didn't, Leela could finally make her way back to Earth. If they did… Well, she'd have to start this frustrating game of cat and mouse all over again. Eventually she'd manage to get away, but all the while she would waste valuable time that could be spent saving the universe.

"If only I could just head home and forget these pink jerks…" But she couldn't and she knew it. She couldn't let the brains that were chasing her find out where she was going. If they somehow managed to get a message through to the huge army of brainspawn that was chasing the other Leela, the whole group might decide to go join the brains that were attacking Earth. That would just about double the invaders' strength, and cut the universe's chances of survival to shreds.

The radar stayed blank. If the brains were going to catch up to the Planet Express Ship they would have done so already. Leela breathed a sigh of relief and pushed the throttle forward to maximum thrust. A few seconds later her ship's bow was pointing towards home.

As the Planet Express Ship skirted the fringes of the brainspawn-controlled star system, Leela had a sudden overwhelming sense of déjà vu. The feeling washed over her like a wave, making the little hairs on the back of her neck stand up straight. A throbbing pressure began to build behind her eye. The PE captain winced and put one hand to her forehead.

"What the heck is this?" Leela muttered, more than a little worried. Movement caught the cyclops' eye. A distant ball of ice and rock was floating by slowly to port. The urgent feeling that she had somehow done this before grew even stronger.

"That moon! I'll bet it's the one I crashed on!"

And sure enough, there was a very faint, yet very familiar energy signature coming from the direction of the mini-planet. Somewhere down there, another Leela was struggling to maneuver in an uncomfortable spacesuit, busily repairing her crippled vessel. That other Leela would never take her eye off her work long enough to wonder at the white spark gliding silently over her head.

Half a billion miles away, in the Planet Express Ship that was not lying crippled on the edge of a snowy plain, Leela gazed at the moon as it disappeared from the viewport. After a moment of thought she changed her grip on the stick. In a series of graceful motions the Planet Express Ship's wings raised and dipped in the pilots' age old greeting. Leela knew full well that her other self would never see the gesture from so far away, but it was all she could do.

"If only I could go down there and talk to her; tell her to stay out of the Planet Express building. In two minutes I could tell her enough to save Fry's life and give the universe a chance." But there was no way to do it, not without risking getting too close to one of the dozens of brainspawn that were flying hither and thither through the star system.

"Strange… When I was crashed on that ice-ball I never saw a single brain on the radar screen. They must have started flying around while I was working on the ship and then vanished before I got back to the cockpit."

That was a vaguely disturbing thought

"I mean, it's not like they knew I was alive, right? No of course not. And how could they possibly know when I was out working on the ship and when I was on the bridge even if they did know I was alive, which they couldn't have since they would have killed me. It was just a coincidence, nothing else." Leela wasn't quite as convinced as she would have liked.


	6. Part 5 Chapter 3

Everyone was already present at the conference table when Fry came bounding in. Hermes looked up from his stack of papers long enough to give the delivery boy a disapproving look and then went back to collating. Everyone else just continued staring idly into space, obviously wishing they were somewhere else.

Fry stopped a few feet from the door, confused by what he saw. He was ten minutes late, which was actually really early by his standards. Why was everyone sitting around doing nothing? Why hadn't the meeting started yet?

The delivery boy winced when the answer came to him. "Oh crap. Hermes is gonna _kill_ me. I'm the Captain now that Leela's gone, or at least until the professor finds someone else desperate enough to take the job. They can't start the meeting without me."

Suddenly Fry was aware that everyone was staring at him, probably because he was standing around in the middle of the room like an idiot. Red faced, the delivery boy crossed the few feet to the conference table and took his customary seat. With a pang he realized that the one next to him was empty; the one that by all rights should be supporting Leela as she fought valiantly to stay awake through one of Hermes' morning accounting speeches.

Clearing his throat, the red head sheepishly addressed his fellows. "Umm, sorry guys. I guess I didn't realize that you can't start without me anymore."

Hermes crossed his arms. "Fry mon, until we find someone to replace Leela, you're da actin' Captain. Dat means you have to be at work on time every day. You can't be showin' up whenever y'please and cuttin' work early like you used ta. If you can't handle dat, well, we'll just have ta find another delivery boy who can."

Fry gulped and nodded his understanding, but said nothing. It wasn't fair that Hermes was pushing him into this new responsibility. Fry had wanted to be the Pilot, not the Captain. Besides, it wasn't as though he was getting _paid_ for this temporary promotion. Then again, there were times Fry wasn't even sure he was being paid, period.

"Alright den. I was afraid I might be making a mistake letting you be da captain, but if you-"

Bender cut off the Jamaican mid-sentence. "Let's see, you're trusting a four hundred ton spaceship and all our lives to someone who tries to sneak up on his reflection in the mirror… Nope, makes sense to me."

Hermes did the smart thing and continued as though Bender had said nothing. The robot was still sore about not being allowed to pilot the ship, and until he blew off some steam it would be best to just ignore him.

"-but if you think dat you can handle it, den lets start da meeting."

Hermes sat down and heartily resumed his collating. There was an awkward silence, after a few moments of which Amy and Fry exchanged puzzled glances. Hermes looked up and stared pointedly at Professor Farnsworth, who as it turned out, was sound asleep. Zoidberg poked the old scientist, but there was no response.

The crustacean's eyes went wide.

"My God, his third heart isn't beating! He's dead!"

"Professor?" Hermes called. Again there was no answer. "Professor!"

Farnsworth awoke with a start, his eyes darting from one person to another without comprehension.

"Huh-wha? Where am I?"

"You're at Planet Express, Professor," Fry said. "It's time for you to tell us what today's mission is going to be."

Farnsworth regarded the delivery boy as if he were speaking Neptunian. "What are you talking about? I don't even know who any of you are! What's this Planet Express you're blabbering on about? Now Fry, Bender, and Zoidberg, listen up."

Zoidberg was ecstatic. "Hurray, I'm useful!

"Umm, yes well…" continued Farnsworth. "Today you will be making a delivery to, uhh…"

"Caduceus VIII, the hospital planet," Hermes added. "I remember da name because my favorite stapler is called da same thing."

"What are we delivering?" Fry asked.

"Heh-wha? Oh yes, right. You'll be delivering something with which no modern institute of medicine can be without, one thousand pounds worth of old magazines."

"Aww man…" Bender grumbled, "Old magazines? I can't make any money by stealing those. Count me out."

With Leela gone it would be up to Fry to browbeat the robot into doing his job. The delivery boy put on the sternest face he could muster.

"Bender, you'll do what the professor tells you or I'll make you scrub every last inch of the ship with a toothbrush."

Everyone except Farnsworth (who had once again fallen asleep) stared at Fry with their mouths agape. They had never heard such a tone of command from their pointy-haired friend. The stack of papers slid from Hermes' hands and landed on the table with a plop.

Fry blushed slightly, knowing that he didn't have the guts to back up his threat. It was hard enough even to sound menacing. The only way he could even pull it off was by imagining what Leela would say if she were here.

Bender rolled his eyes. He had been Fry's best friend long enough to know when he was bluffing, not that it wasn't plain to everyone else in the room as well. "Alright skinbag, keep your space pants on. I'll come on the stupid mission. Just don't expect me to do any actual work. Bender's got _some _standards, baby."

Hermes overrode Fry as the red head was about to speak. The Jamaican was becoming impatient, anxious to get back to his office and start his morning form-stamping routine. "Ok, so dat's all settled den. Professor, do you have anything to add?" Farnsworth's only response was a loud snore. Hermes jabbed him none too gently.

The Professor jerked awake once more. "Huh, what? Oh yes, right. Off you go!"

Try as he might, Fry just couldn't get comfortable in the Captain's seat. It wasn't that it wasn't well padded or anything. In fact, he had spent many hours in the past piloting the ship from this very chair while Leela took a break without feeling any discomfort, but that had been when he wasn't the captain. It had been Leela's chair then, and Fry had been borrowing it with her permission. Now the exalted seat was his, and the delivery boy couldn't quite suppress the feeling that he was somehow stealing it from her.

The bridge hatch swished open and Amy came walking into the compartment.

"Hi Fry. I'm done fixing that turn signal light that burned out. You can go ahead and take off as soon as I'm out of the way."

"Thanks Amy." Fry stopped his squirming for a moment. "Hey, wanna come with us? Bender's still sore that I got to be Captain instead of him and, well, it would be nice to talk to someone besides Zoidberg."

The Martian intern shook her head. "Nope, sorry. I'd like to, but the Professor wants me to help him out in his lab today. Maybe next time."

"Oh, alright." Fry tried not to show his disappointment. "I guess I'll see you later then. Oh umm hey, could you tell Bender to get up here? I think he's asleep in his cabin."

"Sure, no problem. Do you want me to call Zoidberg too?"

"No, leave Zoidberg where he is. He'll just get in the way."

Amy shrugged. "Ok, sure. Anyway, have a nice trip. Bye!"

With a final wave, the intern strode off of the bridge. Fry waited a few minutes for her to exit the ship and walk across the hangar bay before powering up. The muted roar of the dark matter engines built through the hull. Amy's figure disappeared into the depths of the building. Bender sauntered onto the bridge and took up his station.

Excited beyond all reason, Fry prepared to step on the gas pedal and start his first mission as Captain. With a light touch Fry gave the starship some gas, and the sleek rocket lifted a foot off the floor. Ever so gently the delivery boy adjusted his pitch, and the nose drifted upward. There was a loud crunch. Cursing to himself, Fry pressed a button on his HUD. The hangar bay doors slid open, revealing a patch of sky. But then, just as Fry was about to kick his vessel into high gear, something swooped into his flight path, something too bizarre to register in the delivery boy's mind. Fry gawked for a long moment at the green shape that had no right to be floating there in front of him.

Bender, just as startled as Fry but quicker on the rebound, was the first to speak. "What the hell? There's another Planet Express Ship?"

That's certainly what it looked like. Somebody had made an exact copy of the professor's ship.

"What the heck is going on here?" Fry wondered aloud.

The red head wouldn't have to wait long to find out. The other craft abandoned its position over the Planet Express building and settled down in the abandoned lot across the street. A single figure emerged from under the ship a few moments later. Fry, having no clue as to what could possibly be going on, but aware that he was in charge and therefore had to do _something_, took his foot off the gas pedal and let his ship settle back into the hangar. As soon as the engines died he and Bender were out of their chairs.

A minute later, the robot and the delivery boy ran from the front door of Planet Express. Moments later they rounded the side of the building and the strange copy Planet Express Ship came into view. Fry stopped in his tracks. Leaning against the ship's starboard fin was a familiar purple-haired cyclops.

"Leela? What are you doing here?" Fry didn't think he could get any more confused.

Then Leela spotted him, and with a cry she came running. At the last moment Fry put his hands up to protect himself, thinking his friend had gone quite mad, but Leela broke through his guard like it wasn't even there. Fry suddenly found himself enveloped in her arms. Shocked beyond words, the delivery boy could only return her embrace as the woman wept silently into his shoulder.


	7. Part 5 Chapter 4

"What in da name of Jah is goin' on out here!"

"Hermes, it- it's not what it looks like." Fry gently pulled himself away from Leela's grasp and turned to face the bureaucrat, who was walking across the empty street. As The Jamaican reached the curb Fry could see the fire of righteous bureaucratic wrath glowing in his eyes.

"Well dat's a relief, cuz for a second I thought you and Bender were standin' around fraternizin' with people dat don't work here anymore, when yer asses are supposed to be halfway to da Pegasus Galaxy by n-" The Jamaican stopped mid tirade, having noticed the tear streaks running down Leela's face. His anger evaporated. "Leela mon, what's wrong?"

Leela wiped the tears from her eye with her arm. "I- I'll be ok in a minute, Hermes."

By this point Hermes had crossed the short distance from the street. Stepping over a clump of weeds, he moved next to Bender. "Da hell you will! You look sorrier den a green snake in a sugar cane mill!"

Despite herself, Leela smiled. "I know, Hermes. It's been… a rough few days. And seeing Planet Express whole again and you guys ali- I mean, seeing you guys again after what happened…"

Fry, Bender, and Hermes exchanged glances.

"Leela, what _happened_ to you?"

"It's… a long story Fry." Something was in Leela's eye that sent a shiver down the delivery boy's spine.

Hermes noticed it too. "A'right. Why don't you come inside and tell us wot's going on, especially da part about how you got yer hands on a perfect copy of da Professor's ship. Fry, Bender, you stay wit' her. I'll go get da Professor."

"Thanks Hermes," Leela said, grateful.

The Jamaican nodded, then turned and hurried back across the street. Leela followed at a much slower pace, Fry guiding her between the clumps of brush and over the fallen power lines of the abandoned lot. Leela didn't really need the help, but she accepted it without protest, content for once to be fussed over by the people who cared about her. Bender lagged behind, bored.

The door to Planet Express swished open. Fry guided Leela through the building to the lounge. Leela made her way to the couch and let herself collapse into it.

A moment later the lounge doors swished open and Hermes came walking in with a steaming mug of coffee. Leela gladly accepted it from the Jamaican's outstretched hand just as Farnsworth was shuffling through the still-open door. The ancient scientist crossed the few steps from the door and stood next to Bender and Hermes.

For a long time, Leela said nothing. Light streamed in through the room's bay window, bathing everything in the golden light of early morning. Heat from the ceramic mug in her hands warmed her body and the aroma warmed her spirit. Surrounded by friends who cared about her, Leela was content.

The ancient sofa creaked as Fry sat down. The delivery boy gave Leela a worried look. He started to put his arm around her, but stopped, no doubt remembering the last time he'd tried such a bold move. To his amazement Leela not only didn't hit him, but actually drew closer.

"Alright Leela. What the heck is going on?" Bender had been able to handle the second spaceship, the unexpected crying, and the strange comment about Planet Express being whole again, but Leela accepting Fry's attempts at affection? That was just plain unbelievable. "Not that I care," he added. "I just want to get this over with. I have other, Bender-related things to be doing."

Leela sighed and straightened, her sweet few moments of peace at an end. "Alright, I'll try and explain- Hey wait a minute, where's Amy? She should be here too."

"She's in the lab," Farnsworth explained. "I was working on a dangerous experiment when Hermes called me. Someone had to stay and monitor it until the radiation levels decrease a few thousand percent… She'll be here as soon as she can."

"Oh, alright… I'm not sure I really understand all of it myself, but it all started… I guess it was last night for you guys…"

"Eh? What do you mean by 'you guys?'" Farnsworth gave Leela an odd look.

"I know how that sounds Professor, but please, let me finish."

The Professor fell silent, a dubious look still on his face. Fry nodded for Leela to continue.

"Anyway, the morning after Fry visited me at my apartment, this morning I guess, I went to work at Applied Cryogenics. Everything started out normal, but right around lunchtime I got distracted and wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. My chair fell back and I ended up in one of the cryo-freezers. When I finally woke up, it was a thousand years in the future. New New York was in ruins. The whole city was deserted, just smashed into rubble and left to rot. I managed to make my way through the streets to Planet Express, but when I got there all I found was a burned out hulk. God it was awful…"

Leela paused for a moment, not sure how to continue. She had to be careful about what she said next. If she went around insisting that she'd run across her pet 1000 years in the future, and not only that, but that he turned out to be some sort of undercover operative for a race of super intelligent space-gerbils, well, she'd just end up getting tossed in the loony bin.

"Anyway, I finally found… uhh, somebody living in the Planet Express building, and uhh, they, knew what had happened. See, there are these giant flying brains that hate all consciousness but their own. They wiped out all life on Earth just so they wouldn't have to listen to us think."

"Wait a minute mon. Giant flying brains? Dis is a bit much, even coming from you. I know you want yer job back, but makin' up crazy stories isn't the way t'go about it." Farnsworth nodded in agreement.

Leela smiled sadly. They weren't going to believe her. "I know I sound crazy Hermes, but please, you've got to believe me." She paused as a thought dawned. "Wait. Fry, you know what I'm talking about. Please tell me you remember the brains. They attacked Earth a few months ago and made everyone stupid, and then only you remembered."

Fry scratched his head and frowned. "I dunno Leela, that doesn't ring a bell."

"Please Fry," Leela implored, "Try to remember. Even if no one else believes me, I- I need to know that you don't think I'm crazy."

Fry's eyes grew wide. "I don't think you're crazy!"

"I do," muttered Bender. Fry glared at him.

"Fry. The brains. Please, try to concentrate."

"Sorry Leela, I don't remem- Wait." Fry wrestled with the thought that was trying to form in his head. "Wait. Brains. That _does_ sound familiar. Yes! The brains! They had these gross blobby fields that made everyone dumb. Then you showed up out of nowhere in this tiny spaceship and helped me fight the biggest brain of all! I _do_ remember!" The delivery boy grinned at Leela, delighted. Leela sighed, relieved beyond words.

"Umm, sorry to interrupt this happy little moment of discovery chumps, but I'm not buying it. I don't remember any giant evil brains taking over the world, and unless someone reformatted my hard drive without telling me, I think I would remember a bunch of floating nerds turning everyone into morons."

"But Fry remembers!"

"Oh please, Leela. If you told Fry that the sky was pink, he'd agree with you just so you'd be happy with him."

"But I _do_ remember!" Fry insisted.

"And anyway," Bender continued, "If you're stuck a thousand years in the future, then what the hell are you doing here complainin' to me about it right now?"

"Well uhh, the thing is, the guy I found also happened to know where to find a working time machine…"

Bender rolled his eyes. Hermes frowned at the robot, crossed his arms, and turned to face Leela. "Listen Leela, we want to believe ya, but wot your sayin' is just so crazy."

"Leela isn't crazy! Everybody stop saying that!" Fry half stood, fists clenched.

"It's all right Fry, please, sit down." Leela took hold of the delivery boy's arm. Reluctantly he let her pull him back down beside her.

"Look, I know that I sound crazy. There've been a few times in the past few days that I've thought I might _be_ crazy, but the truth is that I'm not, and you have to listen to me. The lives of everyone on the planet depend on it."

"Den we need some proof." Bender and Farnsworth muttered agreement.

"Well, what about the second Planet Express Ship? Hermes, you and Bender both saw it."

Hermes started to speak but fell silent, stumped. It was eventually Farnsworth that spoke. "I've sent many delivery crews to their dooms, oh my yes. Each one had a ship identical to the one that you flew when you were Captain, Leela. Granted I can't remember who half of you are, but it seems to me that I remember some of those ships being painted green and red, just like the current one. That ship of yours could be any one of those."

"You think I found one of your old ships and dreamed up some big story just to get my job back! But that's even more farfetched than the story I'm telling you!" It really wasn't, and Leela knew it.

"Sorry Leela, but we're going to need some other proof. Wot about dis time machine you were talkin' about?"

"Uhh, it doesn't work right now." Leela blushed at how that sounded, hurrying on before anyone could say anything. "But it will soon! N-… uhh, I mean, that guy I met said that it has to recharge after it gets used. It'll work in a few hours, I swear!"

"Ok, den we'll wait a few hours, and if you're time gizmo works, den we'll believe ya."

"No!" The exclamation came out a little louder than Leela had intended. "I mean, we can't wait around and do nothing for a few hours! That's why it was so important that I go back in time. I had to warn you. The brains are going to attack in just over 5 hours! We need to tell the DOOP! God, what can I do to make you believe me?" Dismayed, Leela put her head in her hands. Fry leaned closer, trying to comfort her.

"Wait." Leela bolted upright, spilling her coffee and startling Fry into backing away.

"What time is it?" She demanded.

Hermes looked at his watch. "8:10. Why?"

Leela grinned. "Perfect! You guys want proof? I'll give you proof." Leela set her now lukewarm drink down on the floor and strode to the conference room door, stopping a foot in front of it. The door opened automatically, but closed again upon sensing that no one was walking through. Leela put her ear to the cold metal.

The Planet Express Crew waited expectantly, but Leela made no further movement.

Finally Fry couldn't take it anymore. "Leela, what-"

"Just a minute Fry. You'll see."

A minutes passed. Fry began to fidget. "Umm, Leela…"

There was a noise in the next room. Fry recognized the sound. The phone was ringing.

Bender moved to answer whoever was calling, but Leela didn't let him pass. "No, Bender," she whispered. "Let someone else get it."

"But Leela" asked Fry, also in a whisper, "if we're all in here and you're blocking the doorway, then who…" Fry's voice trailed off. More sounds were audible through the closed door: the sound of muffled footsteps and the voice of a very annoyed Martian intern.

"Ungh, where did everyone go? Spleesh, why is it that every time I get myself saturated with gamma radiation, the phone rings and everyone else is conveniently gone?"

There was a muffled click as Amy activated the videophone.

"**_Planet Express, this is Amy speaking."_ **

"_**Hi Amy, can I talk to Fry?"** _

Fry's mouth flew open at the familiar voice. "Wot da 'ell?" Hermes whispered.

"_**Oh, hi Leela. Sorry, Fry's out on a delivery already."**_

"**_Shoot, I was afraid he'd be gone already… Ok, could you do me a favor then? Tell him to call me as soon as he gets back."_** There was a click. The call was over.

A second later the door to the conference room slid open. Amy stopped inches from Leela's face, her expression of annoyance quickly overridden with astonishment.

"Leela?" she stammered. "But, the phone, I mean. How… But I just got off the phone with you!"

Leela turned to face the rest of the crew. They were all staring at her, mouths agape. Leela grinned, victorious.

"Great Mosquito of Escondido, woman. That _was_ da truth!"


	8. Part 5 Chapter 5

It took another ten minutes to bring Amy up to speed. The other PE crew members interrupted from time to time with questions, still not quite sure what to make of everything they were being told.

"So how long do we 'ave before dese flying brains of yers get here?" Hermes asked.

"Just under five hours. If we don't do something soon, all life on the planet is doomed."

"By Jah, it's Armageddon!"

The Professor crossed his arms. "This won't do. I already called dibs on Armaggedon, damnit! If any brain is going to destroy the planet, it's going to be mine! We must inform the DOOP!" Farnsworth shuffled through the door that did not lead to the conference room.

"Uhh Professor, where are you going?" Leela called after him. "There's a wall screen right here-" The doors swished closed.

"And I'll inform Da Central Bureacracy!"

"What good will that do?" asked Fry.

"None. But it _will_ generate a lot of paperwork, and by Jah, if da world is gonna end I want to go out doin' what I love." Hermes stood from where he'd been sitting on the couch and headed in the same direction as the Professor. A moment later Bender followed him.

"Bender, where are you going?" Leela asked.

"Where I always go when the world is about to end, downtown to find good places to loot. Later, jerkwads!" The doors swished shut behind him.

When the robot had been gone for a few moments, Fry spoke up. "Umm Leela, can I help?" Amy nodded, having been just about to ask the same question.

Leela turned to them, surprised. "Well sure, but you don't have to ask me. I'm not the Captain anymore, remember?"

"I know, but you've always been better at, you know…" Fry's voice trailed off.

"Making decisions? Being in charge? Staying cool under pressure? Piloting the ship?"

"Yeah, that. Look Leela, I know that the Professor fired you or whatever, but just between us, could we pretend you're the Captain again?

Leela was taken aback. "You really want me to be in charge again?"

Fry nodded.

Leela turned to Amy. "What about you Amy, do you want me to be Captain again?"

Amy thought about if for a minute and then nodded. "Yeah. I have a date this Friday with Armando, and I'd kinda like to still be alive. I think I have a better chance if you're in charge. Uhh, no offense Fry."

Fry smiled thinly. "None taken."

Leela was silent for a moment. "Thanks guys," she finally managed. "This… really means a lot to me…" She had to stop for a moment to keep her emotions under control. "Alright, here's what we're going to do." Suddenly she was all business. A small part of her marveled at how easy it was to fall back into the patterns of command. "Fry, I need a special favor from you."

"Anything."

"I need you to go to my apartment and get Nibbler for me."

"Wait, what?" Fry looked confused, then hurt. "Please Leela, don't just give me some errand to get me out of the way. I can help, I swear."

Leela's eye widened in surprise. "Crap," she thought, "of course he'd think that." It wouldn't be the first time she'd given him some obviously invented task to keep him out from underfoot. "No, no Fry you've got it all wrong. I need Nibbler for… well it'll be a lot more believable if I explain it after you brought him back here. Please Fry, this is really, really important."

"Well…" Fry's eyes probed Leela's face, searching for some sign. Suddenly his face lit in a wide grin. Apparently he'd seen what he was looking for. "Alright, I'll do it!"

"Thanks."

Fry, now perhaps just a bit overzealous, threw her his best salute. It was a sloppy mess, and Leela still wasn't technically Captain regardless of what agreement she and her friends happened to come to, but Leela still appreciated the gesture. She smiled at him, and he grinned at her again. Then he turned and walked brusquely through the conference room doors.

Leela turned to Amy. "Amy, I need you to go through the Professor's lab and find anything that can be used as a weapon. The Professor is talking to The DOOP right now, but even if they believe him and assemble the fleet we'll need more firepower."

Amy nodded. "Sure."

Leela hesitated as a thought struck. "Hey, Amy. When I called you to ask to speak to Fry, why did you say he was gone on a delivery already? I know you were in the conference room because I could see the table in the background, and I know the ship was there because I saw Fry land it in the hangar when I landed in the lot across the street. If the ship was there, why would you think Fry was gone?"

Amy gave Leela an odd look. "Are you sure you saw Fry land in the hangar?"

"Yes, very sure."

"Huh. Well the ship wasn't there when you called."

Leela stared at her. "What do you mean it wasn't there?"

Fry chose that minute to come careening back into the room. "Umm guys, I think we have a problem!"

"Dear Me: I need to borrow the ship. You'll understand later, trust me. P.S. Don't let Fry overh-" Leela fell silent.

"Well, what else does it say?" Fry asked.

Leela turned the note over in her hand. There was nothing written on the back. "Nothing. That's all there is."

Fry scratched his head, confused. "Weird. Why would anybody write a note to themselves saying they took the ship? I mean, how could they not know they took the ship if they were the ones that did it?"

"Easy, because that person didn't know she was going to take it." Leela handed the note to Fry so that he could look at it. "That's my handwriting."

Fry peered at the wrinkled paper. It words certainly did look like they were scribbled in Leela's blocky script. Fry shook his head. "Wait a minute." He protested. "I've been with you ever since you landed. If you'd written that note and stolen the ship, I woulda noticed."

"Yeah, plus you were all surprised when I said the ship wasn't here," added Amy.

"Well yeah, but that's because I haven't written this yet." Leela said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Of course, after a few days of time travel, things like finding notes in your own handwriting that you hadn't written were no less ordinary than climbing into a hovertaxi on the way to the ape fight.

Fry stared at her. He managed a "Wha? But you just said-" before his mental gears started to strip.

Amy, who was just as confused as Fry but ashamed to admit to Leela that she didn't know what was going on, threw the delivery boy a look of pity.

"I said that the note is in my handwriting, not that I'd written it."

Fry's head throbbed. Wearily he lowered himself into one of the chairs around the conference table, letting the note slide out of his hand and onto the table. "Stupid confusing note," Fry thought to himself. "This is why I only read comic books." Leela wasn't making it any easier, either.

"Are you alright, Fry?"

"Yeah, sorry Leela. I'm trying to understand, but my brain's all hurty and stuff."

Leela smiled and placed a hand on the delivery boy's shoulder. "It's ok, Fry. I guess I'm just so used to this weird time travel-y stuff now that it doesn't seem weird to me anymore, but I guess I'm not explaining very well am I? Maybe Amy can help me out since she's not confused at all." Leela snuck a furtive glance in Amy's direction to see if the sarcasm would register. It didn't, as always.

"Anyway," Leela continued, "I'll bet this note is from the future. That would explain why it's in my handwriting and why I don't remember writing it. I haven't yet. And if I do write this in the future sometime, I'll know that I'm going to be the one that reads it when it gets found. Does that make sense?"

Fry nodded slowly, afraid that if he moved his head too fast the tenuous grasp he had on what Leela was saying would be dashed to pieces on the inside of his skull. "So… So some time in the future you're going to need to come back in time and steal the ship?"

"Borrow, but yeah. At least, that's what I think."

"But if it was you, then why did you write a note? You coulda just walked up to somebody and said you were going to take the ship. Nobody would've cared. Well, except for Hermes. He would've cared since you aren't the Captain anymore. But nobody else woulda cared."

"Maybe she was in a hurry?" Amy ventured.

Leela nodded. "That's my guess. That would explain why I stopped writing in mid sentence, and why we found it just lying there in the middle of the hangar floor."

The door to the conference room swished open. Professor Farnsworth came shuffling out, a look of annoyance on his face. "Ah, there you are," he said after spotting Leela, Fry, and Amy clustered around the conference table. "Leela, the DOOP needs to talk to you. And by the DOOP I mean Zapp Brannigan."

Leela groaned. "Do I have to?"

"I'm afraid so. Captain Brannigan refuses to help until he speaks to you personally."

Again Leela groaned. There were things worse than death. Talking to Zapp Brannigan was one of them. "Alright, I'll be there in a min… Hey, wait a minute. Professor, aren't you curious about what happened to the spaceship?"

"The wha?"

"You know, the intergalactic spaceship that you designed yourself. The one that was parked here just a few minutes ago?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Leela rolled her eye but didn't press further. The senile old man would remember eventually. She pressed a button on her wrist console. According to the built in clock, it was 8:35. Between trying to explain everything to her former coworkers and the sudden disappearance of the ship Leela had managed to eat up an entire hour. It was time to get things moving, or there would be hell to pay.

"Fry, I need you to go get Nibbler for me. _Now_."

Fry jumped out of his chair at the sudden urgency in his friend's voice. "Aye aye Capt- I mean, Leela." Just in time he remembered that Farnsworth was in the room. It probably didn't matter if the old man overheard, since it was doubtful that he even remembered firing Leela in the first place, but now was not the time to explain that he had agreed to take orders from someone who didn't even work for the company anymore. At a nod from Leela, Fry sprinted out of the room.

"Wait Fry, you need the password to my d-" The delivery boy was gone. "Oh well," Leela sighed, "He'll figure something out."

"Well, I guess I'd better go talk to that pompous windbag." Leela cringed at the prospect. Was the survival of the universe _really_ worth having a conversation with Zapp Brannigan? The cyclops thought for a moment. Yes, but just barely. Leela strode to the room's large video screen. She hesitated before turning it on. "Oh, and Amy, I need you to find those weapons for me."

Amy nodded. "Right." The intern started to walk off but turned around after she'd gone only a few steps. "Professor, could you help me? I need to find things in your lab that we can use to blow stuff up."

Farnsworth's face lit up like an eighty-watt light bulb. Suddenly he liked where the conversation was headed. "Blow stuff up, you say?" The wicked glee on the Professor's face would have sent school children running for their mommies. "My yes, I think I can help you do that, hmm yes, most definitely," he said as he and Amy started to walk off.

Leela turned back to the video screen. She pressed the power button The device told her that somebody was on hold on line 1. With a sigh of resignation Leela pressed one final button. The screen was filled with a familiar face.

"Hello Zapp."

"Ah Leela, there you are. I was beginning to wonder if that senile Professor friend of yours had forgotten I was on the line, just like all those other times I called and he had to go look for you."

Leela crossed her arms. "He didn't forget those times either. I just never answered the phone. Now can we get on with this please? The world is coming to an end in just over four hours."

"Yes, these flying brains I've been hearing so much about. I've always suspected that nerds would one day rebel and conquer the planet, but I'm afraid I'm going to need something in return before I put wave after wave of my trusted men at your disposal."

"Uh-huh. And what exactly do you want in return?" Leela's eye narrowed, having guessed the answer before it was stated.

"Well, you could sleep with me."

Leela made as if to reach for the wall screen's off switch. "Forget it. I'd rather let the world come to the end." Her hand stopped an inch from the switch, where Zapp couldn't see it. If she wanted any chance of enlisting the DOOP's help she would need to have Captain Brannigan on her side, but if she even hinted at how much she needed him he'd walk all over her.

Predictably, Zapp fell for the bluff. "Wait! I mean, uhh… a date?"

"No."

"Two dates?"

Leela sighed. The man was a moron. "How about another double date?" The bile rose in her throat. "Steady, Turanga," she told herself. "You're doing this to save the lives of everyone you care about."

Wincing, Leela continued. "Amy and Kif, me and…" She forced herself to say it. "Me and you."

Zapp grinned. "A double date, you say? I knew you couldn't resist me. Hard to blame you, though. Very well, I will inform Kif as soon as he's done bleaching my gym socks."

"Yeah, you do that." Inwardly she tried to console herself "It's alright. Don't throw up. You can just weasel your way out of this later. Besides, look at the bright side. There's a good chance that you won't survive long enough to have to worry about it."

Zapp hung up. Leela collapsed into a conference room chair, suddenly feeling like she desperately needed a shower.

"Identity test failed. Access denied."

Fry cursed under his breath. "Stupid future people. Why can't they just put a key on the welcome mat like I did?" He pressed the button again.

"Identity test failed. Access denied."

"Let me in!" The delivery boy pounded on the button. What a day for Leela to forget that she'd locked her apartment.

"Identity test failed. Access denied."

Much longer and people would start to notice the commotion in the hallway. Still, there was no way Fry was going back to Planet Express empty-handed and explaining to Leela how he'd been too stupid to ask her how to get into her apartment.

He pressed the button again. "Open, dammit! This is an emergency."

"Identity test fai- Emergency subroutines activated." There was a moment's pause, after which the door's flat, recorded voice was replaced with the calm, melodious tones of a young fembot. "What is the emergency?"

Fry took a step backward. He took a quick look around, deciding that yes, this new voice really was coming from right in front of him. "I need to get into Leela's room," he explained to the door. "She asked me to get her pet for her."

"That doesn't sound like much of an emergency." The door's voice carried a hint of annoyance now.

"Well uhh, you see…"

"Name?"

"Uhh… Phillip Fry."

There was another moment of silence. "Phillip Fry, Turanga Leela has listed you as having access to her apartment in the event of an emergency. Please touch your finger to the green button on my control panel."

Fry did as he was told.

The door's voice reverted to the recording. "Scanning… Identity confirmed, Phillip Fry. Access granted." The door swished open.

Fry ran into Leela's apartment, stopping in the middle of the main room. "Here, Nibbler Nibbler Nibbler!" he called.

There was a small sound. Fry whirled, startled. It was only Nibbler. The little furball was standing with his back to the wall, not five feet from the open doorway. Fry relaxed.

"Aww, poor guy. You musta heard me banging on the door and gotten scared." Something is the creature's stance made Fry wonder if that was really the case.

Nibbler made some meaningless spluttering noises and waddled over to the delivery boy. Fry scratched the base of his eyestalk. "Leela sent me to come look for you. There's a bunch of big brains coming to blow up the planet, and for some reason that means I had to come find you." Fry couldn't figure out why he was bothering to explain this to a dumb animal, but for some reason it just seemed like the right thing to do.

For a few moments Nibbler just stood and stared, openmouthed. Then he went into a frenzy, running around the room jabbering crazily. Suddenly he was out the door and headed for the stairs.

Fry cursed and raced after him.

Nibbler rounded the landing and headed for the last flight of stairs with Fry hot on his heels. The delivery boy stole a glance upward, praying that in the split second his attention was off the step in front of him he wouldn't trip and kill himself. Up ahead was a short hallway and then the building's front exit. The door was closed.

Fry grinned. "Gotcha- oh crap."

The door swung open. An old woman started to walk through the threshold and then stopped, startled at the two figures hurtling toward her. Hurriedly she backed out of the way.

Nibbler reached the floor and saw his chance. He lunged. Fry tried for a tackle but missed, rolled, was up on his feet again.

Fry burst into bright sunshine. He looked around him, dazed. There. Nibbler was running full tilt down the sidewalk. Fry sighed and started running.

How something the size of a raccoon could run so fast and so far, Fry had no idea. All he knew was that he couldn't keep up for much longer. Years of fleeing alien death rays had made him a good sprinter, but stamina was something that he'd never had.

Fry lost track of the Nibblonian as he cut through a crowd that was waiting for the bus. Fry dodged the mob and reacquired his target as he disappeared around a corner. Gritting his teeth, Fry forced himself to speed up. There was no way in hell he was going back to Planet Express and explaining to Leela that he'd lost her pet in the city streets.

Slowly Fry gained ground. Two more blocks went by. The delivery boy's lungs were on fire. Nibbler began to pull ahead again. If he didn't do something soon, Nibbler would get away.

Up ahead, a familiar face. "Bender! Get him!" Fry wheezed.

Luckily, robots have excellent hearing.

"Huh?" Bender turned at the sound of his name. In a split second he took everything in. The running alien, Fry struggling to keep up with him, the look of urgency on his friend's face; it all flashed through his CPU at the speed of light. He made a decision. His right arm shot out and smashed a nearby shop window. Nibbler was startled by the sound of the shattering glass. The little black ball of fur stumbled over his own feet and crashed headlong into Bender. The robot reached down and picked him up.

"Thanks, Bender," Fry gasped as he came jogging up to his friend. "Another minute or two and I woulda lost him." The delivery boy stood bent over with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath.

"Whaddya mean, thanks?" Bender asked indignantly. With his free hand he swiped the expensive Rolexes that were sitting in the shattered display window. "I was just mindin' my own business, doing some pre-disaster looting, and this furry little jerk crashed right into me." Sirens blared in the distance. "And speaking of looting, that's my cue." Bender started to walk off, still clutching Nibbler around the waist. The Nibblonian was trying valiantly to wriggle free, but to no avail.

"Wait, Bender!" Fry pleaded, still winded. "Leela wanted me to bring Nibbler back to Planet Express."

"Fine. Then take him." The robot held out his still-struggling captive.

The sirens drew closer. Fry hesitated. He'd already almost lost Nibbler once. He wasn't quite sure he wanted the opportunity to do it again. What on Earth had gotten into Leela's pet anyway?

Bender grew impatient. The police were going to arrive any second. "Alright, fine. I'll help you take him. Now let's get the hell out of here."


	9. Part 5 Chapter 6

Fry and Bender made their way through the streets of New New York with Leela's frantic pet. Bender, arms straight out in front, carried Nibbler firmly with both hands. Every once in awhile the bending robot would utter a string of low curses as Nibbler renewed his effort to free himself. By the time the trio had rounded the last corner and had come into view of the Planet Express building it was all Fry could do to persuade his friend not to drop Nibbler into the nearest open manhole.

The door to Planet Express swished open to reveal a very impatient cyclops waiting on the other side. Bender brushed past her and out of the small anteroom. Fry and Leela had just exchanged glances and started to follow when the bending robot returned carrying Nibbler and a small wastebasket. Muttering one last curse under his breath, Bender placed the NIbblonian firmly on the ground and quickly covered him with the wastebasket, which he had turned upside down to make a makeshift cage. He pulled a brick out of his chest cabinet and placed it on the basket, making any escape impossible.

For a moment no one spoke. Leela just stared at the overturned trashcan as it jiggled and bounced. For a moment she didn't move, as though her mind was far away. Something flickered across her face. Almost it seemed to Fry as though she were remembering some great loss. Finally the wastebasket's erratic movements subsided. Apparently Nibbler had decided to accept his fate. Leela's gaze rose to meet Fry's. Her expression was now unreadable.

"What happened?" Leela asked, simply.

Fry couldn't make his mouth work right. He had expected an explosion the moment Leela had seen Nibbler's distress. Mentally he switched gears out of 'self preservation mode'.

"Uhh, well", he started, "This is going to sound kinda stupid, but I was talking to him, and when I mentioned brains he sorta went all crazy."

Amazingly, instead of rolling her eye and proceeding to chew him out until his ears went red with shame, Leela just nodded. Silently Fry asked himself what had happened to his life that had made hearing of an imminent invasion by superintelligent flying brains a reasonable excuse for a pet to go crazy.

Leela crouched by the now-motionless wastebasket and gestured for Bender to back away. Slowly, the cyclops lifted the makeshift cage. Fry made ready to grab the little space-rodent the moment he tried to move, but soon saw there would be no need. Nibbler just sat there, arms crossed, glaring at Leela as though everything were somehow her fault.

Leela crossed her arms in kind. "You want to tell me what this is all about?"

Fry and Bender both started to respond, but their words died in their throats as they realized that Leela wasn't talking to them.

"It's OK Nibbler. I know all about you and the Nibblonians and the brainspawn. You can talk to me."

Fry was just about to suggest that Leela might want to go lay down for a minute when the most remarkable thing happened. NIbbler jumped to his feet and said in perfect English: "How did you learn of these things?!"

"Actually, you told me. Look, it's a long story and we don't have much time. The brainspawn are on their way to Earth. If we don't do something soon, everyone will be dead in twenty four hours."

"Yes, I heard of this just recently from The Mighty One. Unfortunately, I was captured and carried here against my will, despite my best efforts to escape. It is imperative that I get to my ship, for if it is true that the Brains are already on their way, then there is very little time to spare."

"So you fought Fry and Bender all the way here?"

"Affirmative. I could not afford to take the time to explain the situation. I still cannot." Nibbler stood then, drawing himself up to his full height. He stole a glance toward the door, but quickly determined that Fry, who he had recently discovered was much faster than he looked, would easily capture him before he made it to the street. Turning his two main eyes toward Leela, but keeping the third locked on the door, he implored his friend. "Please, I must be allowed to leave, for your sake and for The Mighty One; the future of the whole universe may depend on…"

"Uhh, hello? Chumps?" Bender interjected, having had entirely enough of not being at the center of attention. "Is anyone planning to explain what the hell is going on? Why is this greasy muppet talking all of the sudden?"

"Oh right, sorry. Fry, Bender, this is Nibbler. He's an undercover operative for a race of super-advanced aliens. He was the one that I found living in the Planet Express Building. He helped me find the time device and- and get home." Again something dark flashed across Leela's face. Fry frowned. He remembered the expression. He'd caught her looking at that same way several times since she'd come back from the future. Something bad had happened that Leela wasn't telling him; something that had happened to Nibbler as well as himself.

Bender's eyes narrowed. "Wait a minute. So I changed this thing's diapers for all these years, and he's a superintelligent spy?!"

"Bender," Leela replied, "you never changed his diaper once. He wouldn't let you near him after you flushed him down the toilet."

"An indignity which I shall never forget. Now please, it is imperative that I am allowed to go to my ship."

"I know, I know. But first tell me, how much help can you bring us? I promised the DOOP that we would have assistance from an alien force, but I couldn't give them the number of ships."

"Sadly, I do not know. With both the Mighty One and The Other in danger, the council is likely to send as much strength as can be mustered, but I do not know that the ships will be here in time. How long do you estimate that we have?"

Leela looked at her wristamajig and paled. "Just under three and a half hours. Hey, you never mentioned 'The Other' before. Who-"

NIbbler's eyes grew wide. "Three and a half hours?!" He exclaimed, cutting Leela off mid sentence. "I cannot muster the full might of the Nibblonian Fleet and have any hope of returning here in time to face the brainspawn head on in that time! Are you sure that this is all the time we have?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Very sure."

"Then I must leave this instant, and return when I can. I cannot promise to be here when the enemy arrives, but with some luck I may return before your defenses crumble. Look to my coming by the dawn of the next day. Look to the East." With that he leapt from his place on the floor, under Fry's legs, and out the front door.

When Nibbler had been gone for a few moments, Leela walked to the room's small bench and sat heavily.

"I was too late. After everything I've done, I got back here too late to do any good." She shook her head sadly.

Fry, who was still trying to process the fact that Nibbler could talk, was startled out of his reverie. "What do you mean, too late? We still have a few hours before the brains get here, and NIbbler said he would bring help."

"Yeah, but he said he couldn't get ships here in time to meet the brainspawn when they show up. By the time he shows up, there won't be anything left to defend."

"So the DOOP has to fight by themselves for awhile. Zapp Brannigan can take care of it. Remember that time he defended that one planet from the Quadraplegians for an entire month?"

"Yeah," Bender piped in, "the trick was to give their ships a hard shake so all of the crew fell out of their wheelchairs. Don't worry Big Boots, things'll work out."

"Yeah, I remember Amy saying that Kif realized... Hey, wait a minute." Leela's tone took on a hint of caution. "Ok Bender, what's the deal. Why are you being so supportive all of the sudden?"

"Because all of this emotional crap is starting to corrode my circuits. Don't you meatbags have a war to plan or something?"

Leela started to answer, but stopped. She blinked twice. "You know what, Bender?" She finally said. "I'll kick myself later for admitting it to you, but you're absolutely right. What am I doing? We don't have time for me to sit around here feeling sorry for myself. I should be out there making sure Zapp doesn't screw up and kill us all." She got to her feet. For a few seconds she paused in thought.

"Ok, this is what we're going to do." Leela said, suddenly all business. "Bender, I need you to help Amy and the Professor load the ship with anything that can be used as a weapon."

"Aww man... Why does the robot with super strength always have to help with the heavy lifting around here?"

"Listen, Bender. I really need your help on this one."

"Yeah, and why shouild I help?"

A corner of Leela's mouth twitched deviously "Because," she replied, "if you don't, I'll block channel 467 on the tv in the lounge."

"But that's the cooking channel!" Bender exclaimed, dismayed. "I need that to watch during work!"

Leela's eye narrowed in a silent reiteration of the threat.

Bender threw his hands up in a gesture of defeat "Alright, alright, don't get your panties in a knot. Sheesh." Bender turned and left the room, muttering under his breath

When the robot was gone, Leela turned to Fry.

"What do you want me to do?" asked the delivery boy.

"I need you to do something for me while I go talk with mayor Poopenmeyer." Leela walked across the room to her purse, which lay on its side by the front door. "While you were gone the mayor called me and asked me to meet with him. He wants me to help him plan the defense of the city."

"What? Why?"

"He said the DOOP told him to prepare for an invasion, and that they told him I was the only person who knew anything about the enemy. While I'm there talking to him, I need you to take something to my parents." Leela began rummaging through her purse. Her hand emerged with a folded up piece of paper. "I was hoping that I'd be able to go to see them myself, but there's not enough time. If I go down to the sewers now to say goodbye... I don't think I'd have the strength to ever come back."

Fry's eyes grew wide. "Whoa, Leela! who said anything about saying goodbye? You'll see your parents again. We'll get through this, like we always have. The evil bad guys will show up. You'll be all like 'kapow', 'whack', 'bam', and kick their butts, and then we'll all come back to Planet Express for victory waffles. Anyway, who made you responsible for the whole world? Let the DOOP take care of it. Nobody is strong enough to save the planet by themselves. Well, except for Superman, and even he needed a whole Justice Team to help him."

Leela frowned and walked to the door. As it swished open she turned to face her friend. As she stood framed by the light from the doorway, a squadron of DOOP fighters arcing across the sky beyond the distant buildings, Fry thought she had never looked so beautiful.

"I know I can't save the world all by myself Fry. I already tried that once, and I lost. But just because I can't do it by myself doesn't mean I won't do everything I can to help. This time I won't just watch helplessly while everyone I care ab..." Suddenly, she fell silent, tears welllling in her eye.

"Leela," Fry asked quietly, "What happened to Nibbler and me when you were in the future?"

For a moment, Leela's mouth worked silently. Then she turned and walked slowly away, leaving a troubled delivery boy to stare after her until the closing door hid her from view.

The sewers were strangely empty for midmorning. As Fry walked the weathered boardwalk to the Turangas' house all he could hear were the sounds of his own footsteps and lap of the wastewater against the pilings. In fact, the underground was so still that the delivery boy could even hear the muffled roar of a DOOP capital ship as took station over the city above him. To prevent panic, the public was being told that the sudden appearance of warships in their skies was nothing more than an exercise; a drill aimed at ensuring the DOOP was prepared to defend the planet in case of an all out assault. Fry wasn't sure he understood why the government was lying to its citizens. Maybe they still weren't sure if the threat was real, and they wanted to avoid explaining themselves if no enemy appeared. Then again, maybe it was simply a matter of their not being anything the government could do to help it's people.

"After all", Fry thought, "how do you evacuate all of the civilians from an entire planet?"

Still, even with the assurances of President Nixon that there was no immediate danger, rumors were beginning to spread at street level. Down below the streets, in the dank tunnels of the mutant city, the rumors had become rampant. The Earthican government had never been particularly kind to it's mutant citizens, forcing them to live underneath the streets as second class citizens. As Fry walked between makeshift houses, their windows boarded and their doors locked from the inside, he realized that to these people, a fleet of DOOP warships was not a thing of protection, but a weapon of force to be used to repress them. Nixon's assurances would mean nothing to these people.

By the time Fry made it to the Turanga's house, the hairs on his neck were standing on end. He couldn't suppress the feeling that he was being watched, and he only hoped that the residents of Lower New New York recognized him as Leela's friend.

With only a few steps left, Fry could take no more. He bolted, eating up the last few feet in two strides and pounding on the rickety wooden door. It opened, much too soon. Turanga Morris had been waiting for him. Fry suddenly found himself face to face with the business end of an old fashioned shotgun.

"Who the hell- Oh geez, Phillip!" Morris lowered his weapon, visibly relieved. Leela's dad backed up a few steps and gestured for Fry to follow him into the house. Fry just stood staring, his face white as a sheet.

"Well don't just stand there like a stump, come in!" Morris grabbed Fry by the shoulder and hauled him into his home, closing and bolting the door behind him. "Munda come on out. It's just Leela's friend Phillip come to visit!"

A few moments later Fry could hear the sound of approaching footsteps, and presently Turanga Munda entered from a back room. She gave Fry one look and gasped.

"My word Morris, you've scared the poor boy half out of his wits. You men and your guns. Didn't I tell you anybody that wanted to break in wouldn't bother to knock? Come on Phillip, I'll make us all some tea and you can tell us what brings you all the way down here today."

Fry, the color slowly returning to his face, nodded thankfully.

"Giant evil brains, eh? What are they gonna do, think us to death?" Morris chuckled to himself and downed a mouthful of tequila. His wife gave him a disapproving look.

"Yes sir, I mean, that's what Leela says." Fry responded. Dutifully he took a sip of the green tea that Munda had placed in front of him. It tasted awful, but Fry drank it just the same, knowing how hard it must have been for a family confined to the sewers to come by.

"Well, is there anything we can do about it?" Leela's mom asked.

Fry took a moment to respond. He didn't want to scare these people, but they had the right to know the truth. "I don't think so. The brains use some kind of weird field that makes everybody dumb. You won't even remember how to help even if you wanted to."

"So we're just supposed to sit around on our couches and wait for the end?" Morris asked, cocking his eyebrow.

"Well uhh, I mean, the DOOP is putting a blockade around the planet. They'll kill the brains before they can get here."

Morris rolled his eye. "Pfft. The DOOP. What have they ever done for us? Besides, with that idiot Brannigan in charge, we'd all be better off just shooting ourselves and getting it over with."

"Morris, please!" Munda snapped. "I'm sorry Phillip. Morris doesn't mean that. It's just that down here in the sewers we don't have much faith in the DOOP. The way they just leave us down here to rot, sometimes it's like we're not even people to them."

Fry nodded. He had been down to the mutant city many times with Leela since she had been reunited with her family. He had seen firsthand the squalor that the mutants lived in, and didn't begrudge them their less-than-rosy attitude toward the DOOP. "I understand. But Zapp isn't in charge, Leela is. That's why I'm the one down here telling you about this instead of her. She's briefing the mayor in City Hall."

Morris and Munda stared at Fry, a mixture of surprise and fear on their faces. Finally, Munda spoke. "My little girl, in charge of the DOOP navy during an invasion?" It was a terrified whisper.

"Well ma'am, I mean, Leela and Zapp are both kinda in charge. It's complicated and I don't really understand it, but if anybody can keep us safe, it's Leela."

The next few moments passed in silence. Fry began to feel uncomfortable, knowing that these people needed something more than the clumsy, empty reassurances that he could give them. Finally, he stood.

"I'm sorry Mr. and Mrs. Turanga, but I need to get back to the surface and help Leela. We've only got a few hours left until the brains get here." Fry reached into his pocket and pulled out Leela's crumpled note. "Leela asked me to bring this to you; that's why I came down here." He fell silent for a moment, knowing he had to say more but unable to come up with the words.

"Look," he finally managed, "don't worry. I've known Leela for a long time, and she's never once been in a situation she couldn't handle. She'll be alright. She'll save the day, just like she always does."

Fry turned and left the room. He was just about to let himself out the front door when Turanga Morris caught up to him.

"Wait a minute, Phillip," he said, putting a leathery hand on the delivery boy's shoulder. Fry turned to face him.

"Listen," Morris continued, "You take care of my daughter, you hear? She's not as tough as she wants everyone to think. She needs someone at her back; someone she knows is there for her when she needs help. That's supposed to be my job as her father, and I've done the best that I can from sixty feet under ground, but it's not enough. Promise me you won't let her get herself hurt."

Of course, Fry knew that in all likelihood it would be Leela making sure that he didn't get himself hurt rather than the other way around, but for once he was smart enough to keep those thoughts to himself and say: "I promise."

Morris grinned and clapped Fry on the back. "Good! You know, she won't admit it, but Leela is really fond of you. She talks about you all the time when she's here. I don't think she even realizes it. Who knows, maybe someday the two of you…" Morris's voice trailed off. "Well, anyway, you should get going. I'll get the other mutants together and see if we can't get some kind of defense organized. Oh, and you might want to use the manhole by the front door. Today isn't a good day for a normal to be walking through the sewers by himself." With that, Morris undid the deadbolt and opened the door.

Taking his cue, Fry walked out onto the house's front porch. Turanga Morris wished him luck one last time and Fry promised once more to keep an eye on Leela, and suddenly the delivery boy was alone in the eerie silence of the sewers. There was a muffled crash somewhere down the street. It was probably just a cat, but Fry, remembering what Morris had said about normals being alone in the sewer, didn't stick around to find out for sure. He sprinted to the nearby ladder to the surface and was up it in a flash, his heart beating hard in his chest.


	10. Part 5 Chapter 7

Leela pounded the elevator button with her fist. The doors rumbled shut, and the compartment started to descend. Her brief hadn't gone well. Ever the politician, Mayor Poopenmeyer had decided on inaction as his response to the coming invasion. He had listened intently enough to Leela's story, and had even seemed ready to believe her, but when it came time to decide on a plan for the city, Poopenmeyer had been unwilling to gamble his political career on a threat that he still thought of as 'possible.' And now, with just over two hours until the brains started their genocide, it was too late to do anything for the innocent people of the world. Leela had hoped that by getting New New York to set an example, the other local governments would start evacuation programs of their own, or at least scratch together some kind of civil defense. But with New New York sitting idle and the President playing down the situation as a military exercise, the civilian population was going to end up caught in the crossfire without any warning at all. It made Leela sick to think about.

The elevator doors slid open and Leela stalked out into the lobby of City Hall. A crowd of people had gathered around a television mounted on the wall next to the small reception desk. The tension in the room was palpable. Leela made her way to the fringes of the group, dreading what she might see on the screen. But there were no brains. Not yet. The news channel was running a story on the sudden appearance of a DOOP armada in the sky. The newscaster, Leela couldn't remember her name, Linda something, was interviewing a so called 'expert', fishing for more information on this supposed military maneuver. In a panel on the top right of the screen, the camera panned across a squadron of heavy cruisers which had taken up station over Washington D.C.

"Damn fishy, if you ask me." A voice grumbled, inches from Leela's right ear. Leela turned, startled. Two DOOP officers were standing next to her, a young lieutenant and a captain. The lieutenant was a tall, lanky biped, his beaked nose and bright white coat of fur identifying him as a Cadian male. The Captain, to Leela's great surprise, was a middle aged Human female.

"Sorry to startle you like that," the Captain said with a smile. "I guess you probably don't have good peripheral vision."

Leela studied the woman carefully. She was tall with green eyes and bright red hair cut to regulation length. A thin line ran down her left cheek; a scar that had never quite gone away. It was not a face Leela remembered.

"I'm sorry… Do I know you?" Leela asked

The woman smiled and shook her head.

"No, I guess you wouldn't. My name's Cameron Voss. I was a lieutenant onboard The Nimbus when we intercepted your ship around Vergon 6 a few years ago, and I recognized you. No offense, but your face isn't one to be forgotten easily."

Leela nodded grudgingly then turned to go, not feeling much in the mood for chatting, especially with someone who would inevitably dredge up unpleasant, Zapp-related memories.

Unexpectedly, and to Leela's infinite annoyance, Captain Voss and the anonymous Lieutenant moved to followed her. Leela waited until she had elbowed herself clear of the small crowd of television viewers before turning to face the two DOOP officers. Hands on hips, Leela addressed them firmly.

"Look, I don't have time to talk right now. The whole world is going to come crashing down on us in two hours and I've got exactly that long to figure out how to save it. Nobody else seems to give a damn. Now if you'll excuse me…" Pivoting on one heel, Leela prepared to stalk off. A firm hand landed on her shoulder. Leela whirled, ready to knock the offender's head clean off.

Captain Voss removed her hand and stepped back two paces. She gave Leela a weary look. "Alright, I see I need to get directly to the point," she said. "When Central Command ordered my ship, The Cumulus, here to Earth, I was given a short brief by Zapp Brannigan, who has been given command of the fleet. All the windbag would tell me is that I should ready my ship for some sort of exercize." She lowered her voice so that only Leela and her silent Lieutenant could hear. "But." She continued "Any idiot knows that this is no training mission. We have simulators for that. We don't invade Terran airspace just for the heck of it. Even Zapp isn't that stupid. Close, but not quite." It might have been true. "An hour ago I got a coded message from Lieutenant Kroker- I assume you know him- requesting me to escort some classified documents to the Mayor. The order didn't make any sense; the military doesn't share classified information with local government. And why did I have to deliver it by hand? We have codes that nobody can break. I thought I'd stop and watch the local news before I headed back to my ship, just to see if the media had heard any rumors about why we're really here."

Leela folded her arms. "The media doesn't know anything." She replied. "You can thank Nixon for that."

Voss nodded. "You're right. The media doesn't have a clue what's going on." The woman's eyes narrowed. "But," she said, "I'm willing to bet my next week of leave that _you_ do."

"Listen, Captain-"

"Please, call me Cameron."

"Alright. Listen, Cameron, in just under two hours- Damn! I don't have time to be explaining this again! Alright, here's the short version. In two hours, thousands of giant brains are going to show up and wipe out the planet. That's why Zapp put up a blockade. I can't believe the moron isn't even telling his officers! You need to get back to your ship as soon as you can and-" Leela fell silent. The crowd around the television set had suddenly gotten very quiet. On the screen was a small pinkish shape. A brain. For a few breathless seconds nothing happened. Then, suddenly, a green flash lit the screen, and the feed was lost Leela checked her wrist device. The time was 1:06pm. The brains were early.

"I thought you said we had two hours?!" Cameron yelled as she followed Leela through the city streets. Her lieutenant, easily keeping pace, remained as mute as ever.

"I don't understand it!" Leela yelled over her shoulder. "The Brains didn't get here until around 3:00 in the afternoon the last time! A cargo transport was supposed to report a sighting right about now, way out near Proxima Centauri. This isn't how it's supposed to happen!"

Leela had filled Cameron in on the details of the invasion as they ran. "Well," the Captain replied, narrowly avoiding a low-flying hovertaxi as she and Leela raced across a street, "It seems that someone forgot to tell these brains of yours to follow the script. That television camera they destroyed was on Ceres. That's only a few minutes' flight from here."

"I know. It doesn't make any sense!"

Cameron said nothing for a minute. Then: "I still think I should be headed for the spaceport."

"I told you, it's not safe. From what Nibbler told me, the brains will hit the spaceport first, to make sure nobody escapes the planet. Your best chance to get back to your ship is to stay with me." Overhead there was a mighty roar, and a shadow passed over the sun. Leela glanced upward. The DOOP flagship, The Nimbus herself, was passing ponderously by overhead.

"Where are we going, anyway?"

"Back to Planet Express. It's where I- well, it's where I used to work." Leela's wrist device started to vibrate. She had a phone call.

Without even slowing down, Leela pressed the button to accept the call. Fry's face appeared, filled with worry.

"Leela-" He started.

"I know Fry. Listen, the brains are here already. One of their scouts just zapped a sensor station in the asteroid belt."

Fry's eyes grew wide. "Geez! Ok. I'm only a few blocks from Planet Express. It took longer than I thought it would to deliver that note to your parents. I.. I thought I'd call you from a phone booth and see if you still needed help at City Hall."

Leela shook her head. "No. The Mayor didn't want to listen. The important thing now is to get the professor's weapons into the air where we can get some use out of them. Are you at the phone booth by the manhole next to my parents' house?"

Fry nodded.

"Ok, wait right there. I'll be there in five minutes."

"But Leela, Planet Express is just right down the street. Why don't I just go get the ship and meet you? That way we'll save time-"

"No!" Leela suddenly came to a stop, nearly sending the bulky alien Lieutenant sprawling on the plascrete. "Listen Fry. This is very important. Under no reason are you to go into the Planet Express Building until after this is over. Alright?"

Fry was understandably bewildered. "Uhh, why?"

"Never mind. Just please, promise me you won't go into the building for any reason. Please." There was a bit more pleading in Leela's voice than she would have liked.

"Umm, alright. Sure. I promise."

"Good! Now hold on. I'll be there in a minute." Leela broke the connection. The next instant she was running again. Cameron and the Lieutenant shot each other a puzzled glance, and then raced to follow.

It began.

Kif Kroker watched the viewscreen nervously as the first wave of enemy contacts approached. The brains were arranged in an orderly matrix of about ten units high by ten units deep, but by several hundred units in breadth. Each brain was separated by its neighbors by several hundred meters, presumably, Kif thought, far enough away that each brainspawn had enough room to maneuver, while close enough for each member of the formation to provide covering fire to his fellows. It was a simple, no nonsense military formation, somehow not as creative as Kif had expected from an army composed entirely of brains. Of course, there was always the possibility that the enemy commander saw them as such an insignificant threat that no strategy was necessary.

The enemy formation advanced to the orbit of the Moon and then halted. Kif waited expectantly, but nothing else happened. Apparently the enemy would wait for the DOOP to take the initiative; an odd move. If you were sure of your own vastly superior strength, why not rush in and overwhelm the defenders?

Kif forced his eyes to leave the viewer and focus on Captain Brannigan. Zapp was, predictably, trying to flirt with the officer of the watch. It had been grossly unconstitutional to bar women from the armed services Kif knew. It had just been a matter of time before the DOOP had to cave in to public outrage and reinstate its female officers. Still, Kif understood wholeheartedly the thinking behind the policy.

The squishy green alien cleared his throat. "Sir," he prompted his captain, "what do you want to do about the approaching army?" He didn't bother to keep the condescending tone out of his voice. Long years had taught him that Zapp was too full of himself to notice. As Zapp turned his head away from the officer of the watch, Lieutenant Cherenkov Kif remembered, the woman glanced in Kif's direction, gestured at Zapp, and rolled her eyes theatrically. Suddenly Kif liked the woman immensely.

"What is it Kif? Can't you see I'm busy?"

"But sir, there's ten thousand brains on the radar. I thought maybe-"

"Belay that Kif! Can't you see that the enemy is here?"

Kif sighed loudly. "What are your orders, sir?"

Zapp stood from his seat and walked to the viewscreen. He studied the uniform rows of the enemy army for a full minute, arms clasped tightly behind his back. Finally he turned and said: "Tell the Cirrus to attack. Let's see what these evil brains can do."

"But sir!" Kif protested. "We don't know what the brainspawn are capable of. Do you really want to send one ship to fight them alone?"

"Now Kif, if it's one thing we don't need it's your 'do you really want to do that' attitude. Now give the order, Lieutenant."

For a moment Kif considered threatening to file a complaint, but in the end he knew it would do no good. "Very well, sir." Hesitantly, he walked back to his station and picked up the communicator. He spoke into it clearly and calmly, refusing to decrease morale by broadcasting his uncertainty. "This is Lieutenant Kroker aboard Nimbus calling Captain Morgan aboard Cirrus. Captain Morgan, begin the attack."

A few moments passed in silence. Then, as if reluctantly, there came the response. "Aye Aye Nimbus. Cirrus moving to engage. Sir, the captain is asking whether we will have any fire support." There was a hint of tension in the speaker's voice. Kif started to respond, then hesitated. Zapp was too busy studying Lieutenant Cherenkov's figure to overhear. Reaching a decision, Kif tightened his grip on the caller and replied. "Tell the Captain that Lieutenant Kroker says he will have support if he needs it."

There was an acknowledgement on the other end of the line, followed by a click as the link was disconnected. Kif put down the caller. Captain Morgan would understand the significance of the promise of aid coming from Kif rather than Captain Brannigan, and Kif knew the risk he himself ran by disobeying a direct order. Still, Zapp was distracted and would likely never even know.

Slowly, cautiously, the Cirrus broke away from the rest of the fleet and approached the enemy lines. Two small squadrons of long range missile frigates, operating under Kif's orders, broke away soon after and took up station to the Cirrus's stern, one each to port and to starboard.

Aboard the bridge of the Nimbus, half a dozen pairs of eyes stayed fixed on the viewscreen. Even Zapp finally noticed the air of tension in the compartment and turned to watch.

The Cirrus drew closer to the enemy. Kif's sensors registered a buildup of energy within her hull; Captain Morgan had ordered the weapons primed. A few thousand miles to stern, the frigates' powerful defensive shields began to charge. The distance between the two forces closed. Silently, Kif counted down the seconds until the Cirrus was within weapons range.

"Five… Four… Three… Two… One…" Something green and glowing shot out from a few dozen of the foremost brainspawn. The weapon hit the Cirrus amidships and enveloped the vessel, encasing it in an eerie glow. Then, to Kif's horror, The Cirrus simply evaporated.

It was over in moments. The two squadrons of frigates opened up on the enemy with everything they had. Two-dozen robobium-tipped warheads shot away from each ship before they reversed thrust for their retreat. None of the ships made it back to the fleet. One by one the enemy weapons found them and pulled them apart, reducing them to a cloud of dust.

Kif's jaw clenched as the cloud of missiles left by the doomed ships honed in on their targets. The brains' fields found many of them and shredded them before they could reach their marks, but, Kif suddenly realized, not quickly enough. Two missiles penetrated the brainspawn ranks and detonated. There was a great flash as the warheads went off, and the bridge crew cheered. Kif simply held his breath.

The glaring light faded as the missiles spent themselves. On the bridge of the Nimbus there was a collective gasp. The brains were still there.

They had done more damage than they had thought. At maximum magnification the viewer revealed two jagged gaps in the brainspawn lines. Countless hundreds of sailors aboard eleven ships had lost their lives, but the enemy was not invulnerable. Still, Kif couldn't help but recall his initial thought. "If the brains are so powerful, why are they waiting for us to come to them?" It didn't make sense.

Presently Kif became aware that Zapp was looking at him.

"Well, Kif? What do you think?" Lieutenant Kroker blinked twice. Could it really be possible that Zapp was asking for his opinion? "What, sir?" He asked.

Captain Brannigan shook his head sadly. "Kif, Kif, Kif" he admonished his first officer. "If you don't learn to pay attention to your Captain you'll never make Lieutenant."

"But I am a Lieuten-"

"Belay that! Now, tell me, what color medal do you think goes best with my uniform, gold or silver? I'd say gold, but I have three of them already…"

Kif glared at his commanding officer. "Sir," he said in the iciest tone he could muster, "I don't think that's important right now."

But Brannigan, as always, was oblivious to his Lieutenant's implied criticisms. "Nonsense, Kif! Any good officer knows that style is always important. Now, order the fleet to get rid of those oversized wads of chewing gum. I'll be in my quarters practicing pick-up lines to use at the reception after the award ceremony if you need me." Then, unbelievably, Captain Brannigan began striding to the exit.

"But- But sir, what are you doing?" But Zapp strode off the bridge and disappeared around the corridor bend.

Kif stared after him for a few moments, mouth open in disbelief. Suddenly he was aware that the eyes of everyone on the bridge were focused on him. The bridge crew was waiting expectantly for orders. His orders. His bridge crew.

Slowly, ponderously, the fleet began to maneuver. Kif had come to the conclusion that the brains were not going to be coaxed into taking the initiative, and so had decided to attack them head on with the full might of the forces available to him. The ships that spearheaded the assault would take heavy casualties, but shear numbers would ensure that some of the DOOP vessels made it to their targets. It was not a strategy that Kif was proud of, and he couldn't quite prevent himself from noting its similarities to Zapp's style of command. Still, Kif had seen how vulnerable the Cirrus, the Nimbus's own sister ship, had been to the enemy's strange weapons. Faced with that kind of firepower, the only options were to either retreat or bring everything to bear and hope to knock out the bad guys before they could bring their weapons to bear.

"Lieutenant Cherenkov, how far are we from the enemy?"

The lieutenant, who sat at Kif's station now that Kif was in command, checked her display screen. "Forty seven thousand kilometers, sir." She replied. "The leading ships are five thousand kilometers farther from the enemy position than the Cirrus was when she was destroyed."

Kif nodded. "Alright. Charge the weapons, and tell the other ships to charge theirs too" Cherenkov nodded and spoke into her caller. Kif waited silently for a few seconds as a low hum built up through the hull. Finally he could delay no longer. "Attack." He whispered.

The Nimbus leapt forward at full attack speed. None of the aliens' green deathrays came anywhere close, but at the front of the formation, the fighter squadrons that were acting as shields for the rest of the fleet were taking a savage beating. Even so, Kif had been right. There were just too many DOOP ships for the brains to handle. Every time one of the squat little fighters vanished in a cloud of debris, two more appeared to take its place, giving the heavily armored capital ships at the rear of the formation ample time to lumber into firing range.

"Is it really going to be this easy?" Kif thought to himself.

But it _was_ that easy, and soon the Nimbus's weapons were in range. Kif gave the order. As one, the Nimbus, the Cumulus, the Stratus, and the Pileus brought their main batteries to bear. The volleys of laser fire from their main laser cannon ate through the enemy ranks like a vibroknife through butter. In a matter of moments the enemy force was cut to ribbons. The few scattered survivors began to retreat, and Kif watched in relief as his forces eliminated them.

"Sir, there's something on the radar you need to see."

Kif, suddenly apprehensive, made his way to Lieutenant Cherenkov's side. When he leaned over her shoulder to peer at the screen his face went pale. A number of brainspawn arranged in small squads had just appeared out of nowhere in low Earth Orbit, within easy striking distance of the planet. But that wasn't what worried Kif. The brainspawn were unimportant compared to what they had brought with them.

"Are those asteroids?!" Lieutenant Cherenkov whispered unbelievingly


	11. Part 5 Chapter 8

The city was in a state of chaos. The rumors of an imminent invasion had been confirmed by reports of a large scale war going on in orbit, and panic had ensues. For some reason, that meant that the whole of downtown was being ransacked, despite limited police presence.

Leela dodged a manbot carrying a television. Cameron and the lieutenant were on her heels. Poor Fry, having already run his fair share that morning, wheezed along behind. Leela had found the delivery boy waiting nervously by the payphone he had just used to call her, just a scant three blocks from Planet Express. With time somewhere between short and nonexistent, Leela had spared only a few seconds for some hasty introductions, and had taken off again, only looking back once to make sure the others were still following.

The four of them had almost made it back to Planet Express when Fry called from the rear: "Umm, Leela? Look up."

"Not now, Fry", she shouted back. "We're almost-" But her voice was cut off with a noise like the world was coming to an end. And it was.

Leela jolted to a stop and stared up at the source of the sound with abject disbelief. Not fear, not confusion, just simple inability to accept what she was seeing. Up in the sky above the city a second sun was shining. A great yellow orb of fire was slowly making its way across the sky, trailing a long tail of thick black smoke. The sound of its passing was massive, to the point that the noise was as much heard as felt; the air, the ground, even Leela's body vibrated with it.

Fry screamed and dove under the nearest parked hovercar, but Leela didn't budge, knowing full well that no amount of cover would make a difference if that stone fell on their heads.

Cameron asked: "Where do you think it will land?" Her tone was calm.

Leela didn't take her gaze away from the falling star. In a few moments it was over the horizon, headed southwest. "It looks like it's moving slow, so it won't go far." There was a tremendous flash from the direction the rock had vanished. "It probably hit somewhere near the west coast, or maybe in the Pacific."

"I wonder if we'll hear it, all the way over here?"

Fry, having sheepishly clambered out from his hiding place, stared at Cameron with eyes wide. Leela understood. Thousands, if not millions of people had just died, and this woman's seemingly only reaction was to wonder how far the sound would travel.

The people on the street, having stopped to watch the meteor's descent in silent terror, began to stir. A storefront window shattered, and suddenly the looting was back in full swing. With a raise of an eyebrow, Cameron sent Leela a silent question. Leela nodded, and started jogging. They reached Planet Express five minutes later.

"It took you meatbags long enough!" Bender called from the ramp of the Planet Express Ship. Leela ignored him and bolted into the ship, taking two steps at a time. Her four companions, winded, and in Bender's case surly, followed at a slightly less breakneck pace.

Amy and The Professor were already on the bridge. Without thinking, Leela slid into the Captain's seat, but the Professor didn't seem to notice. He was too busy fiddling with a half-assembled piece of nasty-looking hardware that was resting on his lap. On his face was a grin of pure evil.

Cameron, seemingly unperturbed by the day's event, leaned nonchalantly on the navigation console and asked: "So, Captain, what's the game plan?"

Leela regarded her for a moment, not having missed the slight emphasis that Voss had put on the word 'Captain'. Was it an acknowledgement of Leela's authority aboard the Planet Express Ship, or a reminder of Cameron's superior military rank? Leela had been discharged from the military at the end of the war with Spheron 1, but this being a time of war, Voss could legally impress everyone present into the DOOP navy, and Leela, having only attained the rank of private in the war, would have to surrender control of her ship. "So", Leela thought, "which is it? Is she an ally, or a rival?"

Amy spoke into what Leela now realized had been several seconds of awkward silence. "Uhh Leela, who are they?"

Cameron addressed the intern. "My name is Cameron. I'm the captain of The Cumulus. Over there is my second officer, Avis." Voss gestured at the hulking white alien "He doesn't say much. We were stuck groundside when the shooting started. I guess we'll be tagging along with you until we can get back to our ship." This last was said with a meaningful glance in Leela's direction. So they were to be allies then, and Voss would not challenge Leela's authority.

"Nice to meet you, Cameron. My name's Amy, and that over there is Professor Farnsworth. Hermes is in his cabin, doing something with a stapler."

"And who is your metal friend?"

"Oh, that's-"

"Yo mama." Bender cut in. "Come on skinsacks, let's cut the crap and get moving already, before the whole damned sky falls on us." A low roar followed by a distant boom served to emphasize the robot's point. A moment later, a column of black smoke began rising from the direction of the Municipal Spaceport.

Leela reached for the ignition, but Cameron lightly grabbed her wrist. The cyclops glared, but Voss did not remove her hand. "Wait Leela, hear me out," Voss said. "Where are you planning to go?" she asked gently.

"Anywhere's better than here." Bender grumbled darkly from the background, but Leela realized suddenly how very wrong he was. If asteroids were falling at leisure across the planet's surface, the DOOP was surely being overrun. That meant that low Earth orbit would be swimming with brainspawn. But they couldn't stay on the ground either. If one of those rocks happened to land close by… Leela shuddered. She had made all her plans based on what Nibbler had said would happen, but everything was different; Anything was possible. With dismay, Leela realized she had absolutely no idea what to do.

Voss, upon seeing Leela's shocked expression, let go of her hand. "I need to get back to my ship as soon as possible" She said. "My first officer can handle things without me, but you know as well as I do that a Captain's place is on her bridge." When Leela didn't respond, she continued. "Now, you told me that you have more experience than anyone with fighting these brainspawn creatures. Strategically, you're indispensable. If we link up with the fleet, the DOOP could really use your knowledge. Then again, the weapons that you were saying your professor has stashed in the hold might be the advantage we need to win this thing. So it seems to me that we have two options: head for the Cumulus, or try and mine the breaches in our lines with the Professor's toys. Since we can't be in two places at once, we'll have to choose one or the other. If we take option A, we'll waste enough time that the brainspawn might overwhelm our positions before we close the gaps. If we choose option B we risk our biggest asset, your life, and leave the fleet to learn how to fight these guys on their own. This is your ship, Leela, so this is your choice." Cameron crossed her arms and smiled. "So which one will it be?"

Leela thought for a moment. She couldn't help but feel a grudging respect for this woman. Not only had she managed to discreetly point out that Leela didn't know what she was doing without alerting anyone else, Cameron had presented her with a well thought out plan of action, while keeping Leela's authority intact by offering no opinions of her own and giving Leela the final decision. Voss, Leela knew, was a fine military officer.

But, Leela realized, Voss's plan was not quite complete. "You're wrong." Said the cyclops.

Voss obviously hadn't been expecting this response. She blinked twice. "What?" She said, her tone suddenly lacking its confident edge.

"When you said we can't be in two places at once. You were wrong." In reply to the general looks of confusion from her companions, Leela reached down and picked something up from next to her seat. It was the time device. Straightening, she addressed Cameron. "This has been charging for hours now. If we use it for a short trip now, it should still have enough power for a big time jump, if we need it."

Cameron studied the little object. "What do you have in mind?" she asked.

Leela stood. "Amy," she said, "You fly the ship. Let the professor tell you where to put his weapons. He'll know how to use them the most effectively. Fry and Bender, you stay and help the Professor. Cameron, Lieutenant Avis, you're with me."

"Where are you going?" Fry asked.

"To steal a spaceship." Leela replied.

The hangar of the Planet Express Building was deserted. Early morning sunlight was just now beginning to work its way through the second story windows, bathing the Planet Express ship's dorsal fin in warm orange light. The only sound was a distant, muffled conversation coming from the lounge, and an occasional loud pop as the ship's exhaust nozzles cooled and contracted, the metal alloy still warm to the touch from recent use. The sharp stink of the plasma exhaust still permeated the air, but it was dissipating rapidly as the fumes were drawn into the overhead air vents.

There was a flash, and two figures suddenly appeared on the hangar floor. A gust of wind, created as molecules were suddenly pushed aside to make room for the new arrivals, quickly spread across the room, but soon lost its energy and died out.

The two figures, one with purple hair and the other with red, strode confidently to the waiting ship, climbed the ship's ladder, and disappeared inside. Moments later, the intruder with the purple hair reappeared and descended the ship's ladder. Kneeling on the floor by the front landing gear, she propped the paper up on one knee and began to write. A few moments had passed in silence when there was a loud clang from somewhere deep in the building, followed by a volley of unintelligible curses. The second intruder now reappeared in the ship's forward hatch and gestured to her partner. The intruder with the purple hair nodded and dropped the paper and rushed back into the ship. A soft light grew in the room, though if anyone had been watching, they would have sworn it had no source. The mysterious glow intensified, throwing the entire hangar into a dazzling, shadowless brilliance. Ripples appeared on the surface on the Planet Express Ship, as though it were a liquid stirred by a slow breeze. The vessel started to move, though not in any direction that the human brain could understand. As it moved it grew more faint, until it seemed as though it was being seen at a great distance through a dense fog. Soon the ship was invisible. It was gone, having left not even a sound to denote its passing.

Fuming, Amy Wong made her way into the empty hangar. After making her way to the conference table, she proceeded to tear off the shreds of her lab coat, as though it were its fault that the professor insisted on storing the nuclear waste and the sulfuric acid in glass bottles. This time she resolved to make the old man clean up the mess. The phone rang for the sixth time. Apparently nobody else was going to bother answering it.

" Ungh, where did everyone go? Spleesh, why is it that every time I get myself saturated with gamma radiation, the phone rings and everyone else is conveniently gone?"

There was a muffled click as she activated the videophone.

"**_Planet Express, this is Amy speaking."_ **

"**_Hi Amy, can I talk to Fry?"_**

The Planet Express Ship finished its wild four-dimensional flight and settled back into reality. From the bridge, the view was much the same as it was before. In fact, the only sign that anything had happened at all was the sudden change in the position of the room's shadows.

Cameron stood up from her place on the couch and stretched. Behind her, Lieutenant Avis untangled himself from his spot at the rear of the bridge.

"Wow, what a rush!" Cameron exclaimed. "You do this time travel thing often?"

Leela shrugged and pressed a button on her console. The hangar bay doors began to open, allowing a widening pool of sunlight into the hangar and onto the ship's bridge. "The first time is the worst." She said, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. "You get used to it after awhile."

The screen on Leela's wrist LoJack-a-mater blinked on, and Amy's worried face appeared.

"Hello?" the intern called. "Leela, is that you? We saw a flash through the hangar windows right before we took off. Are you guys ok?"

"Yes Amy, we're ok, and we've got the ship." The hangar doors finished moving. Automatically, Leela sent the ship straight up and out of the building, never bothering to take her eye from the screen "Where are you guys now?", she asked.

Amy started to answer but Fry's disembodied voice cut her off. Evidently he'd learned how to patch the laser turret's comm. system into the bridge vidscreen. "We're over the north pole! Bender and Hermes are tossing one of the professor's death rays out the airlock. You should have seen what happened when the brains tried to fly past the last bomb we threw overboard. It was like, Kapow! And the brains were all like, argh! Nooo! Gack!"

By this point, Leela's Planet Express Ship had exited the atmosphere. Up ahead was a scene of carnage straight out of a Galaxy Wars documentary. Bits of spaceship and brainspawn lay scattered about in all directions. The DOOP had spread itself out, trying to cover ever-widening gaps in the Earth's defenses. An occasional silent explosion lit the cockpit a dull orange.

Leela, Cameron, and the Lieutenant stared silently at the scene until Amy's voice cut through the reverie. "Hello? Are you guys still there?"

Leela snapped back to her senses, mentally kicking herself for loosing her concentration in the middle of a war. "Yes, Amy we're here. I need to sign off now. I'm going to try and find a way to get Cameron and Avis back to the Cumulus. You guys keep doing what you're doing. And Amy?" The PE captain paused for a moment. "You guys be careful."

Amy grinned. "Aye, aye captain!" The video screen went blank

Cameron moved to Leela's side. "Captain, if I might make a suggestion, one of us needs to man the weapons."

Leela nodded. "Right. The ladder to the turret is just down the hallway behind the bridge."

Cameron nodded. "Right, I saw it when I boarded the sh- Watch out!"

Leela whirled. A massive asteroid filled the front viewport. Leela threw all of her weight into the stick. The PE Ship rolled to starboard and upward, narrowly missing the rock's jagged surface. A squad of brains popped into existence. Leela sent her ship into a barrel roll. Green death rays shot by in all directions. A loud curse blasted over the ship's con after a particularly close call and a volley of red laser fire swept overhead, headed in the brain's direction. A pink dot seethed and then was still. Apparently Cameron had found her way to the ship's cannon.

A few moments later the space around Leela's Planet Express Ship was devoid of brainspawn. Leela brought her ship alongside the asteroid that had nearly destroyed them.

"Cameron," Leela called.

Voss's voice came in over the speaker. "Here. Any idea how we can get rid of this rock?"

"No. Even if we had any torpedoes, there's no way we could do anything to it. The damned thing must be forty miles across. How the hell did I get that close to crashing into it without even seeing it?"

"Easy. Because it wasn't there until you almost crashed into it. It just appeared out of nowhere while your eyes, er, while your eye was turned."

"Just like those brains. They weren't there, and then suddenly they were. Since when can they do that?!"

"I don't know, but we've got to do something about this asteroid, or in another few minutes it'll be in the Earth's atmosphere. That professor of yours doesn't happen to keep a spare bomb or two onboard, does he?"

Leela sighed. "He used to, but he's been a lot more careful not to leave them lying around ever since Bender tried to sell one to The Being of Inconceivable Horror."

"You mean Rosie O'Donnell?"

"No, the other one. The one with tentacles."

"Oh… Well, anyway, your friends should have an extra one."

Leela nodded, and then remembered that Cameron couldn't see her. "Uhh, right. I'll call them." She reached for the video screen's on button, but was interrupted before she could press it.

"Captain! Missile!" Leela whirled at the strange voice, one hand automatically reaching for the laser she had stashed under her seat.

Instead of an armed boarding party, Leela found herself aiming her pistol at Lieutenant Avis, who at some point during the last five minutes had seated himself at the nav station. The Lieutenant didn't even register a hint of surprise at finding the weapon suddenly pointed at his face. Instead, he pointed to the radar screen in front of him, where a large red dot was barreling down on their location.

Leela's face paled. Frantically she threw herself back into the pilot's seat. Cameron's voice came in over the comm again. "Uhh, Leela? I see something big and nasty coming our way."

Leela sent the engines into afterburner. "I know. I'm getting us out of here"

The missile flashed by to port a scant few seconds later. Leela spun the ship 180 degrees, hoping to protect the delicate engines from what was coming. There was a tremendous flash, and apartment sized boulders went flying in all directions. Leela gritted her teeth and changed her grip on the stick. The first rock went by overhead. Then two more passed by to port and starboard. Suddenly there were rocks everywhere, and Leela sent the ship into wild evasive maneuvers. Overhead, the ship's laser fired erratically as Voss tried to keep a lock on the fast moving targets. Two blocks of iron shattered into dust as they were connected with a few lucky shots.

As suddenly as it came, the shock front passed. Leela sat back in her chair and let her sweating hands drop from the controls to her lap. The PE captain hazarded a glance in Lieutenant Avis's direction. The alien looked as unperturbed as ever.

The intercom came alive again with Cameron's voice. "Leela, I've found the Cumulus. There are too many ships in the area for me to separate the Cumulus's beacon from the background chatter, but that missile that almost blasted us was broadcasting my ship's signature. I've traced the missile's trajectory back to a Nimbus class warship. It's got to be the Cumulus."

Leela nodded, wondering inwardly what it was going to take to unsettle her new comrades. "Alright, we'll check it out", she said as calmly as she could manage.


	12. Part 5 Chapter 9

The DOOP was losing ground. Of the two hundred and fifteen capital ships that had been deployed in Earth's defense, only thirty three remained. The defender's slow defeat was becoming a rout, and if a difficult decision needed to be made. As much as it pained her to admit, Cameron knew that Earth was lost. There was nothing more that could be done that would do any good, and there were several thousand other worlds in the Democratic Order of Planets to consider. It was time to withdraw and regroup; to save what little remained of the DOOP Navy, which had until just a few hours ago been by all accounts the most powerful space force that carbon-based life had ever known.

There was only one thing that was preventing Captain Voss from giving the order to retreat. Leela. It was crazy. Every time the word 'withdraw' was about to cross her lips, the purple-haired Cyclops would look her straight in the eyes and Cameron's voice would just die in her throat. There was no threat in Leela's gaze, just an iron will that could not be broken. It was crazy. Here she was acting flag officer for the entire DOOP navy, and yet somehow this captain of a lowly delivery ship was able to have the same effect on her as a 25 star general had on an ensign fresh from academy. Well, that had to stop.

"Commander Williams?"

"Aye Captain?" Williams didn't take his gaze from his console.

"Order the fleet to withdraw. We can't accomplish anything more here today."

"Aye Captain." Without looking at her, Williams made his way to the comm station. Cameron winced. Her first officer was furious with her. She really had waited too long to make the order.

A gasp caught her attention. Cameron glanced around her bridge until she found the source of the noise. Leela was staring at the wristamajig that she was wearing with such a look of abject terror that Cameron's heart skipped a beat. Ignoring her first officer's disapproving look, Cameron left the Captain's chair and went to stand at Leela's side.

When Williams continued to frown at her she turned to him and gave him a smile that just _dared_ him to speak his mind.

"Is there something wrong, Commander?"

Williams glowered but took the hidden reprimand. "No ma'am," he said, and turned his attention to the communications equipment.

Leela's voice regained Cameron's attention

"What do you mean you went back to Planet Express?!" The Cyclops was demanding. From her facial expression Cameron got the impression that Leela had meant to scream the question at the top of her lungs. Probably Leela wasn't even aware that it had come out as little more than a croak.

"I already told you. Fry flew us back here to get away from the brains. He let the ship get all banged up too, but that's what we get for lowering the spaceship driver's license age to twenty-three, I suppose. Now in my day…" The wristamajig's viewscreen wasn't tilted in the right direction for Cameron to see it, but she immediately recognized this new rambling voice as belonging to the old man that she had met briefly aboard the Planet Express Ship.

The senile professor continued babbling. Fascinated, Cameron watched as Leela's face tried to handle the emotions that were washing over it. At last, Farnsington, or whatever his name was, fell silent, perhaps having finally noticed that something was wrong.

"Professor, where is Fry?" Somewhere in that innocent question Cameron saw the promise of disaster.

"Eh-wha? How should I know?" The Professor scoffed. "He keeps picking out the tracking chips I embed in his nose, oh my yes. I sent him off to look for a hammer a few minutes ago and he's not back yet. I'm sure he's around here somewhere."

"Listen, Professor, this is very important. You have to find Fry and make him leave Planet Express. Tell him to go home. Make up some dumb errand. I don't care. Just get rid of him. Now!"

"Oh, fuff! He may be a moron, but he's still a little better at his job than those monkeys I've been breeding, and he doesn't leave as much crap lying around. His brain's easier to operate on too. There's no reason to send him home."

"No Professor, you don't understand! If Fry stays at Planet Express, it's the end of the universe as we know it!"

Cameron winced. That last remark had been loud enough for the whole bridge to hear.

The crew was undoubtedly starting to think their Captain's new expert on the Brainspawn was a complete fruit loop. As if morale wasn't bad enough already. Cameron opened her mouth to interrupt the conversation, but stopped herself, remembering a conversation Leela had had with Fry right before she and Cameron had met up with him. Fry had volunteered to wait for them at Planet Express and Leela had reacted as though she had just heard that the world was ending. It hadn't seemed so strange at the time since, after all, the world really _was_ ending, but now Cameron was beginning to suspect there was something more to the story, something important. She decided to let the conversation continue.

The old man was speaking again. "Now Leela, I know you're still angry that Hermes fired you yesterday, but Fry's been the Captain of my delivery ship for as long as I can remember, and a damned good one too. I'm sure he can look after hims-"

Leela cut him off. "No! I mean, I'm sure Fry can take care of himself. No wait, what am I saying? Of course he can't; but that's not the point. Look, the truth is, well, there might have been a few details of my visit to the future that I sorta… left out."

"Oh? Like what?"

"Well for one thing, maybe I should have mentioned that, if everything goes the way it did the last time, the Brains won't just stop once they've destroyed the Earth." Leela paused for a moment, visibly readying herself for what she was about to say. "Professor, Cameron, I'm sorry. I should have told you earlier. It's just… This is very hard for me."

Commander Williams picked that moment to interrupt. Cameron knew it was probably intentional, the bastard. "Captain, the retreat is being executed. We have five minutes before the lead formations withdraw."

Cameron nodded in acknowledgement. "Noted." She said. That meant the Cumulus would be protected from attack for only another five minutes. After that, things would get interesting very quickly.

Leela looked at Cameron. Voss nodded for her to continue.

"According to Nibbler, the brains are attacking the Earth because we destroyed something they called 'The Infosphere'."

Cameron interrupted. "I don't recall any military campaign to destroy anything called an 'Infosphere'."

Leela nodded sadly. "No, you wouldn't have. The Earthican military didn't destroy it. Fry did, by himself. And since Fry is from Earth, the brains are taking it out on all of us. At least, that's what Nibbler thought. It was the only explanation anyone ever came up with. But why they're here isn't what matters. What matters is that Fry happens to be the only person anywhere in the universe who is immune to those stupefying fields that the Brainspawn have been using on us."

The Professor was obviously confused. When he didn't say anything, Cameron interjected again. "Uhh, Leela? That could have been nice to know, say, four hours ago."

Leela's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, I know I should have told you. I just couldn't. See, there's one last thing I didn't tell you. This isn't my first trip through time. I came back once before, but I got back to Earth too late to do anything. When I got back to Planet Express Fry was in the smelloscope room. Professor, you and everybody else were all stupefied, and Fry was standing there with a laser. When I got there I startled him. The laser fired. There was a barrel full of antimatter. The laser hit it and… Oh god…" The Cyclops began sobbing quietly.

Cameron could guess what had come next. With the only person who could stand up to them out of the picture the Brainspawn had done to everyone else what they had done to Earth. Voss moved to put an arm around Leela's shoulder. The ancient face of the Professor was now visible on the little viewscreen on Leela's forearm.

Cameron regarded the old man. "Professor Farnsworth is it? Even though he's probably in no more danger where he is than anywhere else right now, maybe you should send Fry home for the day."

The Professor responded as though he were answering an academic question. "Oh, I should think that, if what Leela says is true, there is a great deal more danger for Fry here at Planet Express. Time has a way of trying to heal itself; It is called the Law of Conservation of Events. With something as important as the death of the one being capable of standing up to the Brainspawn, it's quite likely that events will turn out much the same as they did before if he stays here." Farnsworth nodded to himself, clearly excited by his own musings. "Oh my yes, it would most certainly all happen again." He said.

Cameron's eyes narrowed. If it was one thing she couldn't stand it was academic types' tendency to make every explanation need an explanation. "How could things turn out the same way they did before? It's not like Leela is going to accidentally startle him into shooting a barrel again."

"Of course she won't. But the other Leela will."

Cameron mulled that over for a second, trying to make sense of it. "So what you think you just said is…"

"Correct!" Farnsworth exclaimed. "Thanks to all of this crazy time travel, there are now _three_ Leelas running around our universe. One Leela is frozen in a tube somewhere. Another Leela is standing on the bridge of your ship. The last Leela is presumably on her way here, unaware that her attempts to save the day will end in Fry's death."

Cameron's brain hurt. "But this is all pointless. Just find Fry and make him leave."

Farnsworth stared at her. "Eh-wha? Why would I want to do that?"

"Oh, I dunno, maybe to keep him from blowing himself, as well as yourself and the rest of your employees to tiny bite-sized pieces?"

"How would destroying the universe help matters?"

Now Cameron was beginning to lose her patience. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's simple. If Fry is not at Planet Express, that past Leela who is on her way here, let's call her Leela Red, will not cause Fry to kill himself. But then the Leela who is on your bridge, let's call her Leela Blue, will be cut off from the timeline. If Leela Red does not kill Fry, then the events that define Leela Blue's past few days will be erased. Leela Blue will never have existed."

Cameron felt Leela's body go rigid. A moment later Cameron's own thoughts caught up. If Leela Blue had never existed, no one would have been around to warn Fry to stay out of Planet Express. It was a paradox.

Farnsworth continued, obviously enjoying his lecture. Cameron was becoming angry at the senile old scientist's dispassionate predictions. Did he even realize that he was talking about the deaths of not only himself but of all of his employees? During her long career in The DOOP, Cameron had come across a few Captains who had acted much the same way as Farnsworth; being much more interested in tactical intricacies, or in Farnsworth's case the intricacies of physical law, than in the human lives who would be expended. It made her sick.

Farnsworth continued to drone on. "According to theory, a time paradox will not destroy the universe as long as there exists even a single time line which is unaffected by the paradox. For example, when Leela Red went back in time to warn us about the brains, the future was altered. That altered the circumstances that led to Leela Red going back in time in the first place, creating a paradox. In this way, any time traveler must deal with the consequences of any previous trip that she had taken through time. Since Leela Blue still has the time machine and still has the chance to fix the paradox somehow, the universe hasn't exploded. If Leela gets involved in a paradox of her own, by saving Fry for example, the last thread holding the universe together will be cut."

Cameron blinked. "Uhh, English please?"

"Unless Fry dies in the smelloscope room this evening, the whole universe will be destroyed."


	13. Part 5 Chapter 10

Part 5  
Chapter 11

Fry backed out of the room. Letting the hammer he was carrying fall to the floor with a clatter, the delivery boy slumped to the floor. Numbly he tried to piece together what he had just overheard. Most of it was that crazy scifi gibberish that you get in a bad space movie, but the Professor's last sentence had been clear as a bell.

"So _that's_ what Leela was hiding from me," he realized, shocked. "I knew something bad happened!" But this was too much. How was he supposed to deal with the knowledge that the fate of the universe itself hinged on him being blown to tiny bits?

"Why the heck does this crazy stuff keep happening to me?" Fry thought darkly. "It's like some insane god has a grudge against me." But this was much worse than anything he'd had to deal with before. "Except for the time when Leela got stung. That was worse cuz I couldn't do anything to help. Bu-u-ut…" He started as an idea began to form in his head. "This time I can. It's just… What am I gonna do?"

His usual answer of 'ask Leela' wouldn't work in this situation since, if the shocked silence on the far end of the conversation he had just been spying on was any sign, Leela didn't have a clue. Farnsworth's advice was pretty clear, on the other hand.

"But can I really walk into a room and know that I'll never walk out again?" Fry searched his feelings, and came up with a disappointing answer. "Not without Leela." The delivery boy sighed. He'd spent so much time relying on Leela to supply his courage that he'd forgotten that he didn't really have all that much of his own.

So what other options were there? It seemed to Fry that there were two. One, he could go talk to the Professor and try to get him to come up with a scenario in which the universe survived and Fry didn't die, or two, he could stand around and try to think until his brain hurt, and _then_ go talk to the Professor. He was just about to take option one when the hallway was flooded with green light.

"Leela, don't be stupid. There's nothing you can do!"

"Oh, really? Do you _know_ that? And how much more help will I be _here_, exactly?" Leela returned Cameron's glare, ignoring the muffled whispers of the bridge crew, who had no doubt never heard anyone stand up to their Captain like this before.

"Well for one thing, you'll be _alive_ if you stay here, whereas you'll be dead as space dirt if you go down there. I really doubt you'll be more helpful as a corpse."

Leela sighed and tried to calm herself a little. It was hard to do, but screaming at the captain of a DOOP warship wasn't getting her anywhere. "Look, Cameron, I appreciate that you want to make sure that I'm safe, but my friends and family are down there. You saw that green flash before the line went dead; I'm willing to bet that was a stupefaction ray, and that means that New New York is under attack. I've got to get down there."

"It has nothing to do with wanting to keep you safe." Cameron snapped. Of course in reality it had _everything_ to do with that, but she couldn't let her crew see their Captain being all sentimental in the middle of a battle. "You're a valuable strategic asset. You've dealt with the Brainspawn before and survived. The DOOP needs you."

Leela shook her head. "Cameron, as of right now you know everything I know about the Brains, and in a little while I won't be able to help predict the future because we'll have passed the moment that I went back in time. The only people's survival I can help with are the ones down there." She pointed out the forward window at the Earth, slowly rotating below them. "I know that you have the authority to lock me in the brig if I don't do what you tell me to, but please, as a friend, you've got to let me go."

Cameron was about to answer, but she was cut off by Commander William's urgent voice. "Umm, not to intrude Captain, but if we don't get out of here right now it won't matter one way or the other whether you let Ms. Leela off the ship. The last of the ships that were screening us have withdrawn. There's nothing between us and the enemy."

As if on cue, one of the ensigns standing at a console near the rear of the bridge piped up. "Seven enemy ships err- craft, I mean…. Seven hostiles closing fast, bearing eight-five by three-six, distance two thousand kilometers!"

"Hard to starboard! Bring forward batteries to bear! Protect the engines!" Captain Voss bolted across the compartment and sailed into her duty station. The officer at the helm rushed to carry out her orders.

Leela suddenly found herself unwatched, and only a few paces from the hatch. Cameron was busy giving orders, and everybody else was too occupied to notice her. She wasn't going to get a better chance than this. Cautiously she made her way to the hatch, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. The hatch whooshed open. Leela cringed at the sound, but nobody seemed to hear it. The moment she walked through, however, Cameron called out to her. "Good Luck, Leela!"

The hatch whooshed shut.

Fry burst into the conference room, where Professor Farnsworth had been conversing with Leela only moments earlier.

"Professor!" called the delivery boy, but there was no answer. Farnsworth had seemingly vanished.

"Where did he go?!" Fry exclaimed. It had only been a few seconds since he had heard the videophone shut off. There was just no way that old arthritic Professor Farnsworth had left the room already.

Fry heard a muffled sound coming from the conference table. Warily, he approached. The noise came again, this time clearly from under the table. Fry bent down to investigate, wishing not for the first time that his coworkers let him carry a laser pistol.

Instead of some terrible scientist-eating alien monster, Fry found himself face to face with the Professor, who was busily chewing on one of his slippers. Noticing that Fry was staring at him, Farnsworth took the slipper out of his mouth and proclaimed:

"Look at me, I'm a genius! I've found the solution to world hunger!"

He then proceeded to jam the dirty white shoe back into his mouth.

Fry cursed under his breath. It was as he had feared; the greenish glow that permeated the building was a Brainspawn stupefaction field.

There was a tremendous wrenching noise. Fry whirled just in time to see one of the hangar bay doors shatter into a hundred pieces and come raining down onto the upper hull of the Planet Express Ship. A warbling scream, immediately cut off, echoed through the room as a particularly large roof fragment flattened the trashcan in which Zoidberg had been rummaging for his dinner.

Fry froze, too stunned to react. It was only when a yellow beam of psychic energy impacted the conference table not 12 inches away that he even noticed the dozen or so brainspawn that had entered the building through the gaping hole in the roof.

Another brain took a shot at him. Fry lunged out of the way just in time, but banged his shin hard against the Professor's conference chair.

"The Professor!" Fry realized with a start. Then a moment later, "The Professor's gun!"

In a move that Fry would have kicked himself in the shin for not thinking of earlier, (had the chair not just done it for him) the delivery boy ducked under the table, reached over the table's smooth edge, and pressed a small red button that was part of the Professor's console. A small compartment opened up under the table, and Fry reached in anxiously. His fingers immediately closed around the cool metal casing of the small laser pistol that the Professor had recently bought at a local pawnshop.

Cautiously Fry raised his head over the table's surface. About half of the brains- Fry didn't take the time to count exactly- were clustered around the bow of the Planet Express Ship. Suddenly they fired, concentrating their strange translucent yellow beams on a small patch of the PE Ship's forward hull. The futuristic composite, which had survived countless re-entries, meteoric bombardments, and laser burns, began to sag and then to melt away, dripping superheated liquid into the bridge. A thin pall of smoke soon started to curl up through the brains' widening hole.

As inconspicuously as possible, Fry began to raise his pistol above the surface of the conference table, but, just as he was lining up his first shot, the six or so brains that were not busily burning their way into the ship opened fire on him and sent him scurrying for cover. When he tried to peek over the table again a few moments later the Brainspawn that had been melting a hole in the ship had already finished their work and had rejoined their comrades. The whole group of brains was now slowly floating it's way in Fry's direction.

Knowing that his hiding place would be useless in a few moments, and that the Planet Express Ship was useless with a gaping hole in the front of it, Fry grabbed the Professor, who was still idly chewing his slipper, and hauled him from under the table. Not even sparing a moment to look behind him, Fry bolted for the door and practically tossed the Professor through. Then Fry rolled through the opening and dodged around to the left, coming up hard against the wooden television stand. A few stray brain rays impacted the far wall before the doors automatically shut. A moment later, the small panel next to the door began to glow red. Fry caught the acrid smell of burning insulation. Apparently one of the Brains had accidentally done what Fry had been too terrified to think of. The door's controls were fried. That meant the hangar bay was sealed off.

Fry stood, shaking. Abruptly he realized that Bender, Hermes, and Amy were all in the room. None of them gave any sign that they had noticed the commotion in the next room, or even that he had just chucked the Professor through a doorway while being shot at by a squadron of bad guys. Instead, they seemed completely absorbed by whatever they were watching on the television. Thinking for a moment that they might be watching some important newscast, the delivery boy craned his neck around the side of the TV. It was the Home Shopping Network.

"Oh, right. The stupid-enation fields…" he said aloud.

Bender spoke up, suddenly excited. "Three gold necklaces for $49.99? Quick, somebody give me the telephone!"

Amy handed the robot her makeup kit. When Bender flipped it open and actually tried to dial it, Fry grabbed it from him.

"Now listen, you guys," Fry said, switching off the television so that he could be sure that they were paying attention to him. "Those big brains have made you all stupid again. We need to get out of here before… oh crap."

Three brains had just appeared outside the room's large bay window, a tactical move that Fry supposed he probably should have seen coming from a mile away. The lead brain fired, but his psychic beam refracted through the glass and buried itself in the ceiling with a puff of vaporizing insulation. The Brains paused for a moment, as if mulling over this new development. Suddenly they all fired at once, but their beams were also harmlessly deflected, one smacking into the windowsill and the others burying themselves in the ceiling like the first one.

A few more Brains showed up. A few seconds went idly by as Fry tried to figure out how to get his friends out of the room and the brains tried to figure out how to get themselves in. Both parties discovered a solution at seemingly the same instant.

"Quick, everybody follow me! Mom's department store is having a sale on beer, collators, fingernail polish, and, uhh… doomsday devices!"

That was all it took. Bender, Amy, and Hermes practically flew off the couch and out the room's rear door. Farnsworth began to shuffle after them. Fry followed them out the door just as the left side of the window began to melt.

Fry, after shooting out the lounge door's control panel, ran to catch up with his stupefied friends. They were all clustered around the elevator at the end of the hall. While they waited for the elevator Fry tried to come up with a plan. Getting everyone out of the lounge was one thing, but getting them safely out of the building when it was about to be overrun with giant evil brains was something entirely different.

Suddenly Fry realized that he was absolutely terrified, and not even because a swarm of space-nerds was melting its way into the room he'd just left, or even because of Leela's tale of his gruesome death in that weird alternate future. Those events were outside his control, and all he could do was try to avoid them. Basically, he had to do what he did best: run away. The trouble was that now he had four people whose lives depended on him. He had to make decisions now that would almost definitely mean life or death for his best friends. The thought was horrifying.

"Good gosh, is this what Leela feels every time we get into an emergency?" As Captain, Leela had to make split-second life or death decisions on an almost daily basis. "No _wonder_ she's tense all the time." It might also explain some of Leela's reluctance to get too close to anyone, he realized.

Fry forced himself away from that line of thought. He needed a plan. Looking around him, the delivery boy tried to place his surroundings in a mental map of the Planet Express Building. Behind him was the lounge and, beyond that, the hangar. In front was the elevator that led to the ground floor or the smelloscope room at the top of the tower. Each of the four rooms accessible from the doors along the hallway's length were dead ends. The smartest thing to do, Fry supposed, was to ride the elevator down to the first floor, lead his coworkers through the building, and head out the front door. Hopefully once they were out of the building the stupification field would wear off and Fry could convince everyone to make a dash for the nearby manhole cover. The sewer mutants would be able to help, and with any luck, Fry wouldn't have to be in charge anymore.

Satisfied with his plan, Fry folded his arms and more or less confidently waited for the elevator. A few seconds passed.

"Man this elevator takes forev- oh. Dammit." The elevator's down button wasn't lit. Fry's coworkers had been too stupid to press the call button. Grumbling to himself, Fry pressed the little plastic square, and the doors immediately opened.

Once again Leela found herself flinging her ship in the direction of New New York at breakneck speed. She glanced at one of the monitors at the tactical station. The time was 5:37. Cameron had delayed her too long. Her past self, Leela Red as the Professor had called her, was in the Earth's atmosphere by now.

"Damn you, Fry." Leela muttered angrily. "Why did you have to go back to Planet Express? There were a million safer places that you could have gone." Of course, she knew that Fry wasn't to blame, and her anger was more with herself than it was with Fry. It was her own fault that everything was about to unravel. If only she'd told her coworkers what had happened to them the last time… But how was she to know that by trying to spare their feelings she had given them a chance to walk blindly into the very situation she was hoping to avoid?

The cyclops frowned at herself. "It wasn't to protect their feelings," she forced herself to admit. "It was to protect mine. I was weak, and because of it I'm in the same situation I was before. If I'd told the Professor about everything before the Brains had even gotten here, I would have known that the universe was going to try and force Fry back into the tower, and I could have done something about it. But I _didn't_ tell him then. I waited until a few minutes before the explosion will happen." And happen it would. Leela was certain of it.

Leela pictured what must be going on at Planet Express at this very moment. The Brains would be closing in from all directions. Everyone would be stupid by now. The brains would cut off the escape routes, and Fry would be forced toward the tower. Leela could not allow that to happen.

Ignoring a brain that happened to lumber into her path, Leela pushed the gas pedal to the deck. The engines screamed in protest as the Planet Express Ship hurtled into the outer fringes of the atmosphere.

There were Brains in the lobby. _Lots_ of them. Fry quickly retreated through the door. A Brain's stray shot sizzled through Amy's hair, just barely grazing her scalp. The intern screamed and looked around wildly, her stupefaction apparently dissipating for a moment. Her eyes locked on Fry's.

"Fry, what…?" She asked, but her eyes were already glazing over again.   
The lobby door opened again. Fry, distracted by Amy's sudden clarity of mind, had forgotten to shoot the door's control panel. Three Brains hovered slowly into the hall and stopped only a foot from Fry's nose. The door closed behind them. Then, unexpectedly, the lead brain spoke:

Greetings, Mighty One. Please, put down your weapon. We wish to talk with you. 

Fry regarded the brain for a moment, suspicious. "Why would the Brains shoot at me and then suddenly decide they want to talk?" he wondered aloud. It didn't make sense.

"You're just trying to stall me," He accused, not really believing it but thinking it sounded like something an evil brain would try and do.

Negative. Things are not as they seem. That Nibblonian friend of yours has been filling your primitive head with lies. There is still a way to end this that does not result in your death or the destruction of the universe. You can still save your world. You can still save Leela. 

Fry was utterly stunned. "H-How do you know about all that?" he demanded, leveling his weapon at the speaker.

That is not important. What matters is that we can help. All you have to do is put down that laser and come with us. 

For a moment Fry wavered, completely at a loss. Then he caught a hint of movement out of the corner of his eye. A couple of Brains were stealthily floating out of a side corridor. They were trying to flank him. He had been right after all. The talking Brain _was_ trying to stall him.

Fry fired, sending the talking brain flopping to the floor. The fallen brain's comrades fired back but Fry dove out of their way just in time. One of the shots buried itself in the floor, and two more ended up in the walls, but one unlucky shot hit Amy in the leg. The Martian intern screamed. Fry dispatched the Brains with a hail of laser blasts.

Fry rushed to Amy's side. "Amy, are you ok?" Fry asked, hoping that being shot in the leg had driven the intern out of her stupefied funk in the same way that her earlier near miss had.

At first Amy only responded with a hail of foreign cursing, but after Fry stared at her blankly for a few seconds she switched back to English

"Guh. What do you think? I just got shot in the leg! And what the heck is going on?"

"No time to explain. We need to get everybody out of here and I need your help before you get stupid again. Do you think you can move?"

Amy tested her leg. "Actually, it's not so bad. It's a lot like that time I tripped and that branding iron fell on me. I think I'll be ok."

"Great!" Taking a step back to put a little room between himself and Amy, Fry began to gesture with his hands. "Ok then here's the plan…"

"Uhh, let me guess, run away in that direction?" Amy interjected, pointing in the direction of the elevator.

Fry paused, confused. "Uhh, no. Why do you say that?"

"Oh, I dunno, maybe because of _them_?" The Martian intern pointed over Fry's shoulder. At some point in the recent firefight, Fry had managed to end up with his back to the lobby door. Now he turned to look where Amy was pointing, pretty sure that he already knew what he was going to see. Sure enough, Amy had been pointing through the open lobby door at the dozen or so Brainspawn that were inside. The delivery boy's step backward had activated the door's motion sensor.

The delivery boy looked left and right. There were a number of Brainspawn slowly making their way down the two side corridors as well. "Ok, new plan," He said. "We do what you said."

Fry started shooting, giving Amy just enough time to herd her stupid coworkers into the elevator. The Brains began to advance, and Fry retreated down the hall. Amy called to him.

"Come on Fry, hurry up. I'm starting to feel stupid again. I have a sudden urge to respond to bulk email!"

Fry turned and ran. Shoving his way into the cramped elevator, the delivery boy slammed the door close button with the palm of his hand. He pressed the button for the second floor. With luck, the Brains in the lounge had left and joined their friends downstairs. If all went well, Fry could burn his way back into the lounge. It wasn't that far a jump to the ground from the big bay window. If they tossed the sofa out first and then tried to land on it they'd probably avoid any broken bones. At least, Fry really hoped they would. Trying to get one of his friends safely down a manhole with a broken arm or leg wouldn't be pretty, but one step at a time.

The elevator doors opened with a clunk. Fry stared. The Brains on this level hadn't given up and joined their friends. After melting their way into the building they'd patiently gone to work on the brick wall that separated the lounge from the hallway beyond. Apparently there hadn't been enough Brains present to just vaporize the walls like they had done to the spaceships in orbit, but they had managed to create a very large hole. Now they were all floating patiently a few meters from the elevator.

Without thinking, Fry slammed the door close button again. "Amy, help me. What the heck should I do?" Fry implored his friend, but a vacant, stupefied stare was the only answer that Fry got.

It was up to him. He had the sudden urge to pace, but in the tiny cramped elevator car it was impossible. "I can't go down. There's too many brains down there for me to hold them all off," Fry reasoned aloud. "But if I try and open the doors here again the Brains outside will blast me before I can zap them." Since sitting still wasn't an option, that only left one alternative. A very, very bad alternative.

"I have to go up," Fry realized, his heart beginning to thump audibly in his chest.

With an overpowering feeling of dread, Fry pressed the up button. The elevator car accelerated for a second and then slowed to a stop. The doors to the smelloscope room opened with a ding. The time was 5:42.


	14. Part 5 Chapter 11 and Part 6

The buffeting from her ship's power dive into the atmosphere was unbelievable. Leela pulled up on the stick with all her strength, but the PE ship had more momentum than she'd figured. The leapt up at her, but still the ship's nose barely moved from the vertical. Then, somewhere between 'I can see my house from here' altitude and 'Oh my god we're all going to die' altitude, the air got a purchase on the ship's underbelly, generating lift. The bow came up amidst the groan of overstressed metal.

Leela looked around, trying to get her bearings. The sky was an ominous ash-grey. That was not what she remembered from the last time she'd come back in time. But then again, there hadn't been any asteroid impacts the last time.

A few familiar skyscrapers flew into view. Leela altered course slightly and descended even further. Up ahead and off to port there was a flurry of activity. The cyclops wasn't all that surprised when the computer reported a nav-beacon error a moment later. All the commotion was a horde of brainspawn chasing Leela's past self as she careened between the towers of New New York. Leela Red was here right on schedule.

Leela Blue put her ship down almost to street level, hoping the brains would be too occupied chasing their current prey to bother with her. Unfortunately, Leela Red had a lead on her. Even at top speed there was no way that Leela Blue was going to make it to Planet Express before her.

With one last gut-wrenching maneuver, Leela Red sent her ship rolling sideways through a gap between two close buildings and across the water to Planet Express. It was still intact! That meant Fry was still alive! One of the brains' greenish rays passed close by to port. Leela Red pushed the nose downward and held course for a split second more. Hoping to catch her pursuers off guard, she suddenly threw the engines into reverse, stopping the ship in midair. The brains went streaming by on all sides, not having had time to react. They'd be back soon enough. Leela Red extended the landing gear and cut the engines entirely. The ship dropped the couple of meters to the ground and landed in the middle of an empty street with a jarring thud. Having come to the decision that she didn't want the brains to get their grubby feelers on her time-amajig while she was gone, Leela Red grabbed it and rushed off the bridge. The ship's clock read 5:42.

When Leela Red got to the bottom of her ship's bow stairwell she couldn't help but pause in shock. Things were not as she'd been expecting. From what Nibbler had told her, everything should still have been relatively intact. He had said nothing about giant clouds of ash or slumping, burned out buildings. It looked oddly like New New York had suffered several recent, moderate earthquakes. During her trip through the atmosphere, she'd even seen giant impact craters to the southwest, as though huge bombs had been dropped. Then, bizarrely, Leela Red found herself practically overwhelmed by a sense of deja-vu. She had the sudden notion that, not only had she done this sometime before, but that something terrible was about to happen. The feeling was so strong that the cyclops half stumbled, leaning momentarily on the ship to keep her balance.

"What the heck is wrong with me?" She exclaimed, terrified by the overpowering emotions that were pumping through her. For a full ten seconds she stood like that, completely exposed, while she fought to regain control of herself. At last, her heartbeat finally reaching normal levels again, Leela Red straightened and began to run, pushing thoughts of doom out of her head

It was only a short run to the Planet Express building. God it was good to see it in one piece again. The sound of laser fire from somewhere inside the structure woke Leela Red from her momentary reverie. She stepped forward cautiously, waiting for the automatic door to sense her presence. The door swished open, and Leela Red rolled through the sudden opening. She took shelter for a moment behind an overturned table and waited for any sign that she had been spotted. Sure enough, a single brainspawn came floating boldly into the hall. It stopped a meter or so from her position, as if listening. Leela Red grew impatient; there wasn't enough time for stealth, damnit! She jumped from her hiding place and leveled her pistol at the giant hovering space-nerd. Unbelievably, it started to laugh at her.

Hahaha… Foolish human, did you really think you were hidden from me behind that pitiful piece of furniture? I saw you the moment you entered the building. I also see the time travel device that you are holding behind your back. You will now hand it over to me or I will reduce you to a babbling moron. 

Leela Red's eye narrowed. "I don't think so, bub. If you're vision is so good then you also see the laser I have pointed at your squishy head, err, face, err whatever you call that wrinkly mess. Now shut up and tell me, where is Fry?" For some reason she felt like she already knew the answer, but that didn't make sense.

The crazy idiot with the spiky red hair? I killed him. His screams were most amusing. 

Somehow, Leela Red knew it was a lie. Her eye narrowed and she fired her weapon, blowing a chunk out of the wall not six inches from the brain. "Now listen very carefully. I am not in the mood for mind games with some giant hackeysack. If you try and lie to me again I swear I'll shoot you full of holes and then beat you until you look like a wad of used chewing gum, understand? Now let's try this again. Where is Fry?"

Now there was some uncertainty in the brainspawn's voice. N-now let's not be hasty. I wasn't serious. I don't even know who you're talking about. Who's Fry? The Mighty One? Never heard of him… 

Leela's finger started to depress the trigger. A tiny voice in the back of her head was screaming at her that she was out of time.

Alright, alright! He's barricaded himself in one of the rooms in the tower, but it doesn't matter. The Big Brain just sent word; its got something special planned for him. Just wait a few minutes and Fry will be easy to find. He'll be everywhere! The brain started to laugh hysterically.

It was too much for the PE captain. She screamed and fired, sending the abruptly silent brain plopping to the floor. Panic stricken, Leela ran through the halls without regard to her own safety. Fry was in the tower! She had to get there before it was too late!

A pair of brains spotted Leela as she ran through the building. They gave chase. Leela dodged them until she reached the elevator. Two quick shots from the cover of the closing elevator car dropped one brain, and then the other. There was the sensation of movement as the lift bore her upward. A few moments later the doors swished open again.

The brains floated one after the other through the smashed windows. Fry stood with his back against the iron bulk of the chimney cover, blasting away at whatever had the misfortune to blunder into his sights. The rest of the crew sat in a group at his feet. It was all Fry could do to convince his stupefied friends to keep still while he attempted to save their asses. "What a day this has been." He thought as he dodged a stray shot.

Fry saw the brain that had just tried to, well, fry him. It was still a long way off, coming in over the water. Closing one eye, the delivery boy steadied himself and took aim, slowly depressing the trigger. "Careful… Careful…" he whispered to himself. The brain floated into his crosshairs. "Almost…" The elevator door swished open.

Fry's body whirled around to meet this new threat. His finger squeezed the trigger instinctively as Leela came rushing into the room. A huge crashing noise tore through the room. Fry was knocked off his feet as his laser fired. The beam crossed the small space and buried itself in the hull of Leela Blue's Planet Express Ship, which had smashed its way into the smelloscope room. The brain that Fry had been shooting at was smeared across the bow. Fry and Leela Red stood paralyzed with shock as Leela Blue ejected one of the bridge windows and slid to the floor

Without even glancing at Fry or her other self, Leela Blue ran across the room, grabbed the barrel of antimatter, and heaved it out a hole in the wall. The barrel tumbled the few meters to the ground and exploded with a massive boom, leaving a smoking hole in the pavement 5 meters across. Part of Planet Express's lower wall was scorched, and a few car alarms went off, but the tower remained intact.

"Umm, will someone please tell me what is going on here?" Leela Red pointed a finger in her counterpart's direction. "And who the hell are you?" She demanded.

"I'm you from the future." Leela Blue said. "I'll explain later. Right now we've got to get the hell out of here. More brainspawn will be here any second."

Leela Red nodded. "Alright. If we can get out of the building we can get back to my ship. It's parked over by-"

"Yes, I know where it is." Leela Blue interrupted. "Now come on, we need to get out of here!"

Fry raised his hand. "Umm, Leelas? I don't want to spoil the moment or anything, but wasn't the universe supposed to be kerploding? I mean, I survived and I wasn't supposed to."

The two Leelas stared at Fry, one in confusion and the other in shock.

"How did you know about that?!" they both demanded simultaneously.

Fry's face went scarlet. "Well uhh, ya see, here's the thing. I kinda overheard a little of what the Professor said earlier while you were talking to him- hey Bender, stop that!"

The two Leelas turned to follow Fry's gaze. Bender was standing by the remains of the smelloscope, trying to light the wrong end of a cigar. The robot was covered in something brown; something brown that was dripping from the banged up Planet Express Ship that was wedged in the roof. Leela Red realized what was happening a split second before her counterpart did.

"Bender, no! You're covered in darkmatter oil!" Leela Red launched herself across the room and tackled Bender in midair, just as the bending robot managed to get a spark.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl. While flammable vapors gracefully saturated the air, the flame slowly lit the tip of Bender's cigar. Leela Blue pulled out the time device and wrenched the knob around, having no time for such trivia as how far back she should go. Bender's cigar, saturated with highly volatile dark matter, ignited like a torch. Leela Red's tackle sent her and the robot sprawling to the floor. Leela Blue whirled, snagged Fry by the jacket, and snapped on the time-device. Fed by the vapors in the air, the flame from Bender's cigar roiled through the air as though it were alive. Then the world exploded.

Leela gasped involuntarily. Time travel was worse without the spaceship. Much worse. A final, abysmal fall into nowhere and a sudden stop signaled that the rollercoaster ride was over. Leela allowed herself to open her eye. She was still in the smelloscope room, but there were several major differences. First, there were no gaping holes in the walls. Second, and most obvious, there was no intergalactic spaceship stuck in the roof. Next to her, someone let out a loud whoop.

"Alright!" exclaimed Fry. "Let's do that again!"

Leela hurriedly clamped a hand over the delivery boy's mouth before he could say anything more.

"Shhh!" She hissed. "I don't know what time the machine sent us back to yet. We can't let anyone know we're here yet!"

Fry wilted under his Captain's glare. "S-Sorry Leela." He whispered.

Leela's face softened. Now that the adrenaline was draining away it was hard to be angry. After all, she'd just saved Fry's life, and spacetime hadn't ripped itself to shreds. Both of those were definite plusses.

A distant, ominous boom rolled through the building. Fry and Leela made their way to the window that pointed in the direction that the sound came from. Leela frowned at the sight that met her eye. The sky was ashen grey.

"Aww, that _can't_ be good." Fry said.

Several of the nearby buildings had cracks running through them, and some of the skyscrapers across the water were burning. A pale yellow light lit the sky in the direction that the recent noise, almost certainly an asteroid impact, had come from. A few minutes later a moderate earthquake shook the building. Luckily the PE building was so overbuilt that there was no damage.

Leela finally looked at the display over the time device. The holographic screen read 'Destination Reached. Total travel time –28 minutes'.

Apparently Leela hadn't instructed the device to send them as far back in time as she'd thought. It didn't matter though. There was enough time to keep Bender from accidentally blowing up the tower if she moved fast.

She turned to face Fry. The delivery boy was watching her, apparently waiting for her to take charge. "Ok Fry, what do we have to do in order to keep that other version of yourself from ever coming into this room?"

"Uhh… " Fry thought for a moment. He was having trouble wrapping his head around the idea that another version of himself was somewhere in the building with him. It was making his brain hurt. Finally he began to speak. "Well… My plan was to get everyone out of the building and into the sewers. I thought we might be safer there."

Leela nodded her head. It was probably what she would have done, which, now that she thought about it, was a little unnerving. Either Fry was showing unusual clarity of thought, or she was starting to lose her mind.

Fry continued, slightly more confident after reading the approval in his friend's face. "We got out of the lounge and downstairs, but there were too many brains. We had to retreat back upstairs, but there were lots of brains there too. The only thing we could do was come up here."

Leela frowned, and Fry, having misunderstood her facial expression, began to apologize. "I know. I know. It was dumb idea, but I didn't know what else to do! There were too many bad guys to fight and there was nowhere else to go. The elevator to the basement is on the other side of the building and there's no exit from there…"

Leela shook her head. "No no no, I'm sorry Fry. You did the right thing. I was just trying to figure out what we should do- Hey, wait. Did you just say there were lots of brains in the lobby? That's weird. When I was just there, there was only one brain around." A little alarm bell started to go off in the back of Leela's mind.

"Yeah, there were like a kazillion of them. They must've left before you got here."

"Yeah. I guess…" Silently she added "But then where did they all _go_, and why did they clear out so fast?" Something didn't feel right.

"But anyway" Fry was saying, "we could go help that other me. We've both got lasers. The three of us might be able to zap enough brains to make it to the sewers. Plus you've got that time-jiggy so we could always come back and do it again if we screw up."

Leela shook her head sadly. "Sorry Fry, but the time machine won't be working again for a long while. We barely had enough power to get it working when we used it just now. If we screw up again we probably won't be able to go back in time far enough to do anything about it. This is my- I mean our- last chance."

Fry took a moment to let that sink in. "Oh. Damn. Well, at least we can still go help that other me."

Leela frowned, but nodded. "Yeah, we can probably hold off the bad guys long enough to make it underground." She agreed. "We can go take shelter with the mutants like you were planning to do." Although she was careful to keep any hint of it out of her voice, she knew full well that this would only act to buy them a little time. The Brains would still come for them, in the end.

The two of them made their way to the elevator, a bit more confident now that they had a plan. Leela pressed the call button. It didn't light up.

"What the hell?!" She exclaimed. "Why isn't this thing working?"

As an answer, the elevator doors began to glow a soft green. Fry gulped and the two of them took a few steps back. The elevator doors opened, but instead of an empty elevator car, a gigantic brain was floating in the elevator shaft. Leela whipped out her pistol and fired off a volley of shots, but the laser bolts ricocheted off the bluish energy field that surrounded the brain. In response, the brain just laughed and floated into the room.

Foolish human. Your primitive weapons are no threat to me. Two tendrils of blue energy sprang out of the brain's underside and wrapped themselves around the humans' weapons. The pistols were ripped from their grasps and went sailing into the open elevator shaft. The brain laughed again.

I command the brainspawn that are laying siege to your world. Though you fought very well this time, I am afraid that not even your knowledge of the future will save your world from its fate 

Leela's eye went wide. The brain's words had hit her like an asteroid impact. She glared. "How do you know about that?!" She yelled. "Why is it that everyone seems to know about that?!"

Even though it was impossible, Leela was certain that the brain sneered at her. You fool. Did you never wonder why our stupefaction fields affected everyone else on Earth, but you somehow always managed to avoid them? Did you think yourself that elusive? 

Leela blinked once. Actually, that's exactly what she had thought.

Or how about the time you were crashed on that ice moon? The Brain continued. Was it not strange that you were left completely alone? 

"W-What?" Leela managed to stutter.

While you were unconscious on that moon I scanned your thoughts and learned of your trip through time. I also learned that, were I to attack Earth, I would surely win, because in the future you visited it had already happened. I quickly gathered my forces and launched an attack. I thank you for accidentally bringing me that message. 

Fry chose that moment to break into the brain's monologue. "So you attacked Earth because Leela's thoughts told you that you couldn't lose?"

Correct. 

"But why did you let Leela get away after she crashed, and why didn't your make-people-stupid rays work on her?"

It was necessary. When I scanned Leela's mind after the crash I learned that she was carrying the time device that my people created. We have long known that using the device was extremely dangerous, much too dangerous to ever be risked. 

"Then why didn't you destroy it?" Fry asked.

Because we are _giant brains_. That device that Leela is planning to hit me across the frontal lobes with- Realizing she'd been caught, Leela lowered the device. It had been a stupid idea anyway. -represents twenty-five thousand years of research. We cannot destroy it. But _because_ we could not bring ourselves to destroy it, we always ran the risk that someone else would try and use it. That is why we guard it so heavily. 

"But why did you let Leela go?" Fry asked again.

I am getting to that. The brain snapped, irritated. We could not use the device because, if a mistake was made, the entire universe could be destroyed. The very existence of the universe was put in jeopardy when that foolish Nibblonian allowed Leela to use the device. 

Fry spoke up. "But I thought you brains wanted to destroy the universe. I mean, you already tried to do it once."

We only wished to destroy the universe after we had gathered every piece of information that existed. In this manner, we would have been able to learn everything that there was to know. When the infosphere was destroyed, all of our data containing all of the knowledge we had gathered was destroyed with it. We cannot allow the universe to be destroyed now while there is information that we no longer have. Killing Leela would have fixed the problem of course, since she would not have had a chance to change the past, but logic told me to leave her alive until I was certain that she did not have some additional part to play. So I let her go. I allowed her to escape and told my soldiers to leave her alive, shooting at her enough to keep her from becoming suspicious. It seems I was correct. Had I killed Leela, you would never have died in that explosion and I would not have won the war. 

"But he didn't die in the explosion." Leela growled. "Not this last time. And now that the past has been changed and it doesn't look like the universe is going to explode after all, you aren't going to win. We will stop you."

Indeed. I had not considered the possibility that you would somehow survive and come back in time to try again. It was only when I realized that the second ship that my forces chased through my star system was another version of you that I realized you had to be dealt with more severely. That is why I changed tactics and decided to drop asteroids on your world. Since I knew about the explosive barrel in this building from your memories, I was certain that I could take care of Fry. You were more difficult. I was hoping the asteroids would provoke you into a foolish move against me, but you remained elusive. You have proven to be most annoying. Even more annoying, you should have created a paradox that cannot be undone when you saved The Fabled One. Only two possibilities exist as to why we are all still alive. Either you will still find some way to defeat me and fix things on your own, or I will kill you both in the near future and solve the paradox myself. Since you no longer have the time device… 

Another bluish energy field shot out from the brain's underside and ripped the time device from Leela's grasp. The time device flew over the brain and followed her laser pistol down the elevator shaft. A light came on in Leela's head.

As I was saying, since you no longer have the time device, it is unlikely that you will be defeating me, leaving us with only one option. Is there anything you would like to say before I scramble your brains and scatter your atoms throughout the city? 

Leela looked at Fry out of the corner of her eye. She knew one way out of this, but it depended upon him. Somehow she had to tell him what to do without letting the brain know what she was up to. If the brain got wind of her plan it would surely stupefy or even shoot her on the spot.

"Wait." She said slowly. "I _think_ we're missing something here." She put as much emphasis as she possibly could on the word 'think'.

Fry turned to her. "What are we missing?"

"Well, you know Fry. Don't you _think_ something is missing?" Not for the first time, Leela wished that she could wink.

"Uhh, no?"

The brain cut Leela off before she could say anything else. "You forget that I can feel your attempts to think, Leela. Though I admire your attempt to remind The Fabled One about our weakness, it was a foolish move. Obviously you have come up with some sort of plan. Hold still while I read your pitiful little mind. A greenish blob of energy lashed out from the brain and surrounded Leela. Her eyes immediately glazed over.

Fry lunged at the brain and began beating at the bluish energy field that protected it. "Stop that! Let her go!" The brain laughed again, obviously enjoying its mastery of the situation. Fry backed away, realizing he wasn't doing any damage. He forced himself to think for a moment. "What did the brain mean by 'telling me about their weakness'? What was Leela trying to tell me?"

Suddenly the brain cried out. It began to squirm in midair. Stop that! It yelled, obviously in pain.

"Wait a minute... Thinking hurts them!" Fry realized as the brain moaned and sank to the florr. "I remember that from the other time the brains invaded the Earth! I wonder how I can use that? Man, what was Leela trying to tell me?"

The brain screamed and the field surrounding Leela dissipated. Suddenly she could think again. Wasting no time, Leela rolled jumped over the agonized brainspawn and hit the elevator call button. This time the button lit. By the time the elevator had reached the smelloscope room, Leela had grabbed Fry and hauled him across the room. The brain was just starting to recover when the elevator closed behind them.

The elevator doors opened onto the first floor of the Planet Express building. Fry bolted, heading for the lobby. Right before he got to the door he realized that Leela wasn't following him. He threw on the brakes and turned his body back toward the elevator. Leela was walking leisurely in his direction.

"Leela, what are you doing? Come on!" He gestured for her to hurry.

Leela shook her head. "No Fry. We're not running away this time. I've got a plan. It came to me when that big brain threw the time device down the elevator shaft. There's no time to explain, just keep the big brain occupied when he shows up. I just hope we're in the right place…" Without another word, Leela turned her back to the delivery boy and faced the elevator they had just left.

"B-But…" Fry stammered. He glanced over his shoulder at the door to the exit. Leela didn't budge. Fry started to speak a couple of times, but when nothing intelligible came out, he gave up and walked to Leela's side. He shook his head. "Leela, remind me later to tell you you're completely nuts."

Leela turned to him and smiled without humor. "If this works, you won't ever need to."

"Yeah? Well if this doesn't work I won't ever be able to. Because we'll both be _dead_."

Leela's smile vanished and she turned back toward the elevator. The wait was not long. There was a terrific shriek of ripping metal. The elevator doors crashed outward. The big brain hovered into the hallway.

I underestimated you two. It said. But it does not matter. Even though I did not have enough time to uncover your plan while I was reading your thoughts, you will not escape me again. I have locked the other Fry and your coworkers in the hallway above us. They will be taken care of momentarily. But now it is your time to die. The brain reared up and began to glow a soft yellow, the color of the brains' deadly psychic rays.

"Fry!" Leela yelled, jamming the delivery boy in the ribs with her elbow.

"Huh? Oh right." Fry began to think. The brain faltered.

No. It said. You- will not- defeat me again. 

To Fry's horror, Leela started to walk up to the shuddering pink lump. "Leela what-" He began.

Leela spoke without turning to face the delivery boy. "Just trust me Fry, I know what I'm doing. I think." She addressed the brain, which was writhing in agony a meter or so above the floor. "Now listen to me you jerk." She put her hands on her hips. "I've gone through a lot in the last few days. I've been frozen, I've gone back in time so many times that I should probably be getting frequent flyer miles, and I've watched my best friends get blown to shreds. Twice. I'm tired, I'm sore, and I'm an emotional wreck. Now is _not_ a good time to piss me off! But you just had to come along and do it anyway. Well not anymore. I'm done. See, you screwed up just now. I know a way out of this." She looked at her wristamajig and grinned evilly. "I'm going home, and there's not a damned thing that you can do to stop me."

There was a bright flash. Fry blinked. A small, perfectly round hole had appeared in the ceiling. A small object appeared in the hole and began to fall. Leela grabbed the time device and laughed triumphantly.

"Right on cue!" She exclaimed. "See, there's a part of my story that you apparently don't know. When the Planet Express Building exploded the first time, I was buried in the rubble. When I woke up I tried to activate the time device but I accidentally dropped it. It hit something when it fell and went back in time without me. I happened to notice the time that was displayed on it right before it vanished and I blacked out again. When you threw my time device down the elevator shaft just now I realized I could get another one if I stood in just the right place at just the right time. Oh, and don't worry. This one had a lot more time to charge than the one you just destroyed did. I'll be able to go back in time as far as I need to."

The brain struggled to speak. It- It does not matter. I w- I will stop you again. You can't win. 

Leela waved the device at the brain. "Wrong-o, hackeysack! I've learned my lesson. Every time I come back here you get in the way. If I come back here again Fry will just end up dead, and I'll do it all over. Again. I'll be reliving this day for the rest of my life. So I've been thinking, how do I break the cycle? How do I stop this day from happening again? Well, I finally figured it out. To make sure this doesn't happen again I'll just have to make sure it never happened in the first place." Leela began to adjust the time device's control knob. "Sorry Mr. Brain," Leela said triumphantly, "but you lose."

Leela started to press the button to activate the device, but she hesitated. "Oh, what the hell," she said, coming to a decision. She backed up a few steps and turned to Fry. "Fry, I've wanted to do this for a long time." Then she did something Fry would never have expected in a million years. She leaned over and kissed him, _hard_. For a moment Fry was certain that she was going to suck the lungs right out of his chest. The delivery boy's eyes went wide; he was so shocked he didn't even return the kiss. Leela backed away and smiled at him. "Sorry Fry." She said sadly. "But that never happened." She activated the time device.

Part 6 

Leela was livid. Damn Hermes and his bureaucracy. She'd been flying the company ship for years now and it was still flying. Sure, there'd been a few mishaps involving city billboards, but that was small stuff. There was no reason to send her off to do some bogus driving exam, mandated by the government or otherwise.

"I mean, it's not like Hermes hasn't ignored the rules before." She grumbled. "He just fills out one of those 'ignore the rules' forms or whatever, and the problem just goes away."

Leela reached her hovercar. Shifting her purse to her left shoulder she reached down and pressed her thumb against a small sensor on the door. The car beeped and unlocked itself. Leela climbed in. She was just about to put the key in the ignition when something caught her eye. There was a folded piece of paper sitting in the seat next to her.

"That's weird." She said aloud. She picked up the paper and unfolded it, mentally crossing her fingers that it wasn't another letter from Fry expressing his true feelings.

It did turn out to be a letter, but it wasn't in Fry's messy chicken scratch. Actually, it looked like it was her handwriting, but that didn't make sense. She hadn't left a letter there.

Curious, Leela began to read:

Dear Leela:

Look in your glove compartment. There's something in there that might help out with the driving test. It's a little present from the future. But be careful. It takes a long time to recharge and it can really screw things up if you let it. Trust me, I know. Only use it to pass the test; then put it and this note _where_ and _when_ you found them. And just so you don't think this is some kind of joke: Once back when you were at the orphanarium you got so mad at Warden Vogel for cancelling Double Soup Tuesday that you switched his coffee with Andarian mammary juice. You know you never told anyone that. Good luck with the test. You won't need it.

Sincerely

You

P.S.: Be nicer to Fry. You owe him one.

Leela stared at the note, not sure what to think. It couldn't be a joke. She had never told anyone about her childish revenge on the warden, the very memory of which made her shudder. The poor man had been ill for weeks. But, since no one else knew about the prank, then that meant… Leela opened her glove box. A small pistol-like device tumbled out into her hands. She regarded it for a moment, looked around her, and tucked it into her purse. Shaking her head, Leela put the key in the hovercar's ignition and pulled out of her parking spot.

Across the street, the author of the note was watching the retreating hovercar over the top of her newspaper. When the vehicle disappeared around the corner, Leela dropped the newspaper on the bench she was sitting on, stood up, and stretched. She wondered idly what would happen when her past self managed to pass the test. Once the other Leela sent the time device into the past, she, the Leela on the bench, would find herself cut off from history entirely. "Will I feel myself fade out of existence?" She wondered. It didn't matter. The universe was safe. She'd done her job.

Leela walked into the Planet Express Building just as Fry was landing the Planet Express Ship. She stood at the railing on the hangar's second floor and waved at him. The delivery boy waved back from the ship's bridge. A moment later the engine noise died away and Fry came trotting down the ship's staircase. By the time he had made it to the conference room, he was out of breath.

"So, how did the test go?" He asked between gasps. "It didn't take you very long."

Leela smiled at him and patted a bulge in her purse with her left hand. "It went fine." She said. "And you're right, it didn't take me very long. Only four tries."

"Four tries?" Fry asked, cocking his head. "You were only gone a few hours. You had enough time to take the test four times?"

"A few hours huh?" Leela smiled mysteriously. "Funny. It seemed to me like I had all the time in the world."

The End 


End file.
